Very nice article. Never thought about what it takes to create a neat puzzle ...
Nyarlathotep's Guide to Creating Your Own Chess Problems
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Very instructive. Keep up the good work!
haha nice research
I’ve wanted to re-create a number of problems from “Classic Chess Problems by Pioneer Composers”, authored by Kenneth S. Howard. Any ideas?
some videos about chess problems - in french -
Mats 2 coups :
Multicoups :
Epreuve de résolution :
Wish I understood French!
perhaps one day I'll dare doing a video in english!
Jacques Rotenberg is a great problemist. I really enjoy his content 
Very nice IM pfren; the 2nd move (in what I believe is the main line) is much trickier to find than the first.
I mean at some point you'd want to put the white queen in d4 after Ka1 pinning the b2 pawn and anticipating Kb1 Qd1#; this severly restricts the choices for the first move. But the black underpromotion is an issue (this is how I solved it eventually). Thanks for sharing by the way.
While I'm not the greatest chess player at all, I've found that the enjoyment I get from solving "mate in three" puzzles is superbly satisfying.
I decided to put together this guide to help encourage others to create quality chess puzzles that people can enjoy on a daily basis.
The Puzzle
In this tutorial, I'll be showing you the basics of puzzle creation. We'll be creating the following mate-in-three puzzle from scratch:
Mate in 3
Creating your own puzzle isn't nearly as complicated as it may seem. It's actually just as fun solving the puzzle, since you're basically backwards engineering a checkmate (think of it as picking a lock, solving a cipher, or cracking a code).
Each puzzle creator has their own set of laws that they lay down prior to creating a puzzle. These generally involve rules regarding the first move, how many pieces are involved on the board, and of course how many moves will be allowed prior to a mate.
First Move Rules
There are generally three schools of thought when it comes to puzzle solving that can greatly increase the difficulty of the problem based solely off the first move alone.
They are:
1.) The Chained Mate - The first move in a chained mate is always to check the opposing king. Chained mates are usually fairly easy to solve, as you only have to consider those pieces that can force a check on the first move. These most often reflect actual end game situations.
2.) Noble Sacrifices - Similar to the chained mate, noble sacrifice puzzles involve intentionally sacrificing a piece in order to force the enemy king into a position that you can then force mate off of. These can at times be quite puzzling as most players are quite reluctant to throw away a piece (especially if it's their queen or a rook), even if mate is possible because of it.
3.) Key Movement - Key move puzzles are my favourite. These puzzles require that the first move made not involve checking the opposing king. The key move usually involves limiting the spaces available for the opposing pieces to move on their turn in some way shape or form. There is only ever one key move that will force the mate. These can be quite difficult to solve, as you have to consider all positions possible for your pieces to move. Once the key is found, the rest of the puzzle is usually quite simple to solve, so solutions for key movement puzzles often only include the first move (leaving all subsequent moves and variations up to the solver to find).
How many pieces should there be on the board?
This is certainly up to personal taste, and while it's generally agreed that no more than seven pieces should be involved, you can have as many as you feel you can comfortably accomodate. Just remember, the more pieces you involve in a puzzle, the more likely it is that someone will find an alternative line that you did not consider while creating it.
How many moves should I allow?
The important thing to remember with most mate in X problems is that the mate can more than likely be solved in X+Y moves. For instance, while I may have been able to solve a "mate in three" problem after five moves, that does not mean I've solved the puzzle. The purpose of setting a lower move threshold is to highlight the elegance and beauty of a simple series of moves. Sure, you can mate in ten, but why not do it in three or four if you can? It's the equivelant of a precision strike to the heart by a rapier vs the bludgeoning death of a catapult. Both get the job done, but one is more elegant than the other. This is why I typically stick to mate in 3 problems, though I have on occasion created a mate in 4. I dont' recommend going higher than that as (imho) it lessens the enjoyment of solving a quick puzzle. However, there are those who LOVE long problems and they most certainly can be beautiful at times. For instance, there is a tsume shogi (japanese chess mating) problem that consists of over 1000 moves! Scary stuff...
The Actual Guide
All that rambling aside, how do you actually create a chess problem? It's simple! Follow these steps:
1.) Start with checkmate and move backwards.
This may seem obvious, but you don't want to start you puzzle creation by try to find a mate. Just set up a position where mate already exists on a board. Keep it elegant. Try to use a decent variety of pieces. You usually want to involve all of your pieces in the mate if at all possible. This does not mean that you want to move these pieces. You really want a set-up that involves multiple threatened squares while only utilizing at most three seperate pieces to force the mate.
The easiest way to find a mate is to look at some of your previous games and remove all of the pieces from the board except those used to create the mate. This will (usually) leave you with an excellent starting place for your puzzle.
In the example below, I've involved the king in the mate, and made the final mating move "g6#". Notice how the knight supports threatening the king while it in itself does not threaten the king directly. The same is true for the king. This is a very important part of puzzle making.
2.) Move backwards. Start by "unmating" the king
In our previous example, this means moving the pawn to g5. This is pretty simple for this example puzzle as the mating piece can only move forward one square. Finding the right place to move a piece for mate is part of the fun of creating puzzles. For instance, you can do a lot of crazy things with a queen to force mate, so developing a concise set of moves for it may be difficult.
3.) Look at your indirect threats and move one of them away.
It is important to always keep in mind the areas that the enemy king can move. For this reason, you usually want pieces near the enemy king that threaten multiple squares.
Keeping with our example, we'll be moving the bishop off of the diagonal. Notice that I've actually moved it to a completely different square. We'll still be able to get to a mating position from here, but I'm currently considering step 5 (tempt the solver) and want to put a juicy free piece out there to distract our victim (err.*cough*) solver.
4.) Decide on your key move
The most difficult part of creating a puzzle is figuring out which move will force your position without allowing the enemy king to escape or require mate in more moves than you have prescribed.
In our example, the key move is quite simple: Kf7
No other move will allow us to force our mate. We can now place the king on any adjacenet square that will allow the piece to reach Kf7 on the first move. In our example, I've decided to move the king to e7. Note that e6, e8, f6, or f8 will all work as well. Using the king at e7 leaves the king with the maximum number of available spaces to move on the first turn, which lends itself to more positions that someone will need to consider to find the key.
5.) Tempt the Victim...Solver
In the final step of puzzle creation, it's usually a good practice to distract or tempt the solver away from the actual threat with other pieces for black. In our example, as I stated earlier, I want to add a piece that white can obtain for free. This is a huge distraction for most solvers ("But it's more material! Why pass that up?!") so it adds another layer to your puzzle. In our example, I'll be adding a pawn to a5. This pawn is immediately threatened by the bishop on d2, so should be a tempting morsel for the solver to get distracted by.
Notice however that I could not use any other piece here safely as it would threaten the integrity of the puzzle. This is one of the difficult parts of constructing "key move" puzzles. You often can not have juicier pieces available to tempt the solver as they can often completely disrupt your plan by simply checking your king.
You're finished!
Well, not quite. The last thing I'd recommend is throwing your puzzle into a chess engine to make sure it's completely sound. When on the go, I use Droidfish on my android phone. Otherwise, I'll throw my puzzle in Fritz and Hiarcs to make sure it's sound before uploading it somewhere or filing it away for future reference.
I hope this mini tutorial has been of some help at least getting you started in the world of puzzle creation. For future topics I plan on discussing the intricacies and delicacies of creating alternative mate situations that can up the complexity of your puzzle exponentially.
If you have any questions, suggestions or otherwise (or have caught any typos) feel free to post here and chime in. Feedback is always appreciated.
Cheers!
-Nyar