Buried king conundrum
Logic
Level
3
In the above position, Black's king is trapped in the corner, but how can White take advantage and win the game?
Move his pawn two steps forward
Move his knight to the left of Black's knight
Move his pawn one step forward
Move his knight in front of his king
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
1 solution
White would like to play his knight in front of his king (the c2 square) to deliver checkmate, but Black's knight is covering that square and would capture if White plays it immediately. If White tries playing the knight to the left of Black's knight, aiming to maneuver it to eventually checkmate from the other side (via c5 to b3), Black will also maneuver his knight to cover that threat (via f5 to d4) and then Black is also in range to check White's king from e2. White can make no progress.
Therefore, White needs to make a temporizing pawn move, waiting for Black's knight to give up protection of the fatal c2 square. But if White moves the pawn two steps forward, Black also makes a pawn move. Unfortunately, it's White's turn again and White has run out of temporizing pawn moves.
So, the solution is to move the pawn only one step forward. Note the symmetry of the two pawns. Now when Black's pawn advances, White's pawn can mirror the advance, so Black is the one who will run out of temporizing moves. Now after the pawn moves are exhausted, it's Black's turn, and so Black must move his knight, allowing White to move the knight to c2 with checkmate.