Daily chess puzzle: Check Mate #278

Another puzzle from Dragoslav Andric’s 1981 book “Matni Udar”.

White to play and mate Black

Morse v Bashian, correspondence 1963/64

Solution

I defy anyone to find the main line: I couldn’t.

1 Ng5! Qf5!  was the defence I couldn’t break, except by winning the rook ending after exchanging everything.

But White has considerably better:

White to play and win

Try to solve this:

2 Qe8+!!

a wonderful magnet move, drawing the rook to where it can be captured: 2..Re8[] 3 Nf7+ Nf7[] 4 Re8 mate.

—

Instead, since I didn’t see 2 Qe8+!!, I played 1 Nf8! which also wins. After 1…Qf5 2 Re5 +-; so 1…Bf5 2 Qh5+ Qh6[] 3 Qh6+ gh 4 Re5 Rf8 5 Rf5 and White is a piece up. But nowhere near as pretty as the main line.

FEN

r6k/ppp3pN/5NQ1/4n3/3p1qb1/8/PPP2PPP/4R1K1 w – – 0 1