Mate in 1 Chess Puzzles
Find the move that ends the game immediately, with no legal defense.
Find the move that ends the game immediately, with no legal defense.
A mate-in-1 puzzle has an immediate checkmating move. The move must check the king while leaving no legal capture, block, or escape. Material value does not matter because the game ends at once.
After finding a promising check, inspect the checking piece first: can it be captured? Then look for a block if the attack travels along a rank, file, or diagonal. Finally, test every adjacent square the king might use.
In the interactive example, Black's knight lands on f2 with check. The knight covers h1 and h3, Black's bishop controls g1, and the king has no legal square or way to remove the attack. That makes Nf2 checkmate.
Repeated mate-in-1 practice turns common king-net patterns into visual habits. Once the final move is easy to see, deeper puzzles become easier because you can recognize the mating position you are trying to create.
Mated is a 21x20 Media game. The rest of our daily games are at 21x20.com.