Chess Puzzles

What is Chess Puzzles?

Chess Puzzles gives you a position and one job: find the best move. Every puzzle comes from a real game. Your opponent makes the first move, then it is your turn to spot the checkmate, win the queen or promote the pawn. Some puzzles end in one move, others need two or three accurate moves in a row while the computer plays the best defence for your opponent.

There is a new daily puzzle every day, the same for everyone, with a streak to keep alive. Rocket Rush is a race: solve as many as you can in three or five minutes, or keep going in Survival until you make three mistakes. The rated ladder matches puzzles to your level and moves your puzzle rating up and down after each one, and the themes filter lets you practise exactly what you want, from mate in one for beginners to skewers and discovered attacks for stronger players.

How to play Chess Puzzles

1. Pick a mode at the top: Daily, Rush, Rated or Themes. The opponent's first move plays automatically; the status line tells you which colour you are and what to find.
2. Tap a piece to see where it can go, then tap the square, or drag the piece there. On a keyboard, use the arrow keys and Enter.
3. If the puzzle has more moves, your opponent replies automatically and you find the next move. A wrong move is shown in red and taken back.
4. Stuck? Hint highlights the piece to move, and a second hint shows the square. Easy puzzles allow two hints, Medium and Hard puzzles one, Expert puzzles and Rocket Rush none. Solution plays the answer, and Replay steps through it move by move.
5. In Rocket Rush, choose 3 minutes, 5 minutes or Survival. Every wrong move is a strike and three strikes end the run.
6. In Rated, a clean solve raises your puzzle rating; a wrong move, a hint or the solution lowers it.

Chess Puzzles tips and strategy

• Look at checks, captures and threats first, in that order. Most puzzles start with a forcing move.
• Ask what your opponent's last move changed: it often left a piece undefended or a king short of squares.
• In mate puzzles, count the squares around the enemy king and look for a move that covers the last escape square.
• In Rocket Rush, the first puzzles are quick: play fast early to save time for the hard ones later.
• A fork attacks two things at once, a pin keeps a piece in place, and a skewer attacks a valuable piece with a weaker one behind it. Practise each in Themes until you see them at a glance.

A daily chess puzzle with a streak

The daily puzzle is the same for every player on the same date and changes at midnight, so you can compare notes with friends. It is chosen from puzzles of moderate difficulty, hard enough to make you think but solvable in a few minutes. Solve it every day to grow your streak; your longest streak is saved, and signed-in players can climb the daily streak leaderboard. A wrong move or a hint does not break your streak, but showing the solution does.

Rocket Rush, rated puzzles and themes

Rocket Rush starts with easy puzzles and climbs quickly. In the timed runs you race a three or five minute clock, and in Survival there is no clock at all, only three strikes. Each type has its own best score and leaderboard. After a run, tap any puzzle in the list to see the solution you missed.

The rated ladder uses the same Elo-style maths as chess ratings: every puzzle has its own rating, and beating a puzzle rated above you gains more points than an easy one. Your first twenty puzzles move the rating faster while it settles. Themes let you practise mate in 1, 2 and 3, forks, pins, skewers, discovered attacks, back rank mates, promotion and endgames, at Easy, Medium, Hard or Expert difficulty.

Where the puzzles come from

The puzzles are a hand-picked set of several thousand from the Lichess open puzzle database, which is released into the public domain under the CC0 licence. Each one was taken from a real game and checked again with our own chess engine: every move is legal, the solution is the only good move at each step, and mate puzzles really end in checkmate. Puzzles load in small pieces as you play, so the game starts quickly even on a slow connection.

Chess Puzzles FAQ