Mate in 3

White to move and mate in three.

This is a puzzle that's well over eleven hundred years old, but still a good one.

nh5+ rxn rxn+ kxn re6#

Well done.

one of my favorites. 🙂

A beautiful double sacrifice. Comes from the 9th century, composed by Al Adli. The oldest puzzle I'm aware of.

Originally posted by kbaumen
A beautiful double sacrifice. Comes from the 9th century, composed by Al Adli. The oldest puzzle I'm aware of.

Does Al Adli have any more like this? Its also forced, no way out.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Does Al Adli have any more like this? Its also forced, no way out.

I don't know actually. This is the only puzzle I've ever seen from him.

Al-Adli does, in his book Kitab ash-Shatranj (The Book of Chess), but this is the most popular because the faras (horse, the Western knight), rukh (chariot, the Western rook) , and shah (king) all move in the same way in shatranj as they do in regular chess. The firz moves exactly one square diagonally, and was replaced by the queen in Western chess. The alfil (elephant) moves two squares diagonally, jumping over the intervening square, and baydak move like pawns, but with the exception that they are not allowed to move two squares at the outset. When one reaches the back, it's promoted to a firz.

I'm not sure if the Kitab has been translated. Maybe after I work on my Arabic some more, I could do so.

i solved the puzzle in 1:43

Originally posted by Nullifidian
[fen]6K1/3r3r/5kn1/5p2/5P2/6N1/8/4R1R1[/fen]

White to move and mate in three.

This is a puzzle that's well over eleven hundred years old, but still a good one.

the answer is kind of obvious, black threatens # if you don't force him not to. therefore, you must check or remove piece(in this case check) all the time.