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Trials of a woodpusher: Adventures in chess, backyard gardening, and maybe whisker chopping

It's not a mate-in-1, more like a mate in 15 or 20 moves. It's the concept of cutting down the triangle that the B-K is trapped in bit by bit.
 
Oh, you made it sound like one move would do it. I thought you actually wanted us to guess the move. I’ve forgotten how chess works. Played less than 10 times in my life.
 
I think the goal is to force them back into the H1 corner? Starting with bishop to F5?
 
Getting black locked into the H1 corner with him only able to shuffle between either h1+h2 or g1+h1 is the key.
Right now, the N+B covered squares form a nice wall. To make progress, get the white K to d2, the get the B on the d1-h5 diagonal and the N to f5 to cover the e3+g3+h4 squares, basically moving the wall "forward." Wash-rinse-repeat.
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woodpusher said:
Getting black locked into the H1 corner with him only able to shuffle between either h1+h2 or g1+h1 is the key.
Right now, the N+B covered squares form a nice wall. To make progress, get the white K to d2, the get the B on the d1-h5 diagonal and the N to f5 to cover the e3+g3+h4 squares, basically moving the wall "forward." Wash-rinse-repeat.
View attachment 4793
Click to expand...
So as I said King to d3 would move him that direction........leaving him 2 moves. Then B to h5 and so on
 
A king attacks all its immediate 8 surrounding squares, so the black K is attacking d2,e2,f2,e3,f3,d4,e4,f4 (even if it cannot move into those squares). Since you can never move your K into a square which is being attacked by the opponent, the white K cannot move to d2 or d3 at present.
 
Starting from here....
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typical play would proceed.
81. Kd1 Kf2 82. Kd2 Kf3 83.Kd3 Kf2 84. Bh5 (cutting down the triangle of squares available to the black K) Kg3
85. Ke3 Kh4 (why not? LOL) 86. Be2 Kg3 87. Nc5 Kh4 (trying to get out) 88. Ne4 Nope!

We have gone from this "wall"...
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to this one, cutting down the corner space available to black.
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Black is getting squeezed bit by bit and the next step is to lock the black K down to either H1+h2 or g1+g2.


In other news, I received a call this morning with a job offer from the company I interviewed with last week. Pay is higher than I expected for the entry-level position, but I suppose that they either liked what they saw in terms of potential or the other 100+ jobs I looked at were scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for "el cheapo" workers. In any event, I am super happy to soon be working again (Honestly, NEVER thought I would say that again!) and double-so that it is only a 10 minute drive away from home. Woohoo!
 
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