Chess notation cheat-sheet (for new readers)
Pieces: K king · Q queen · R rook · B bishop · N knight · (a pawn move has no letter)
Actions: x takes · + check · # mate · O-O short castles · O-O-O long castles · e8=Q pawn promotes to queen
Annotations: ! good move · !! brilliant · ? mistake · ?? blunder
Morphy's mate chess puzzles: the bishop-and-rook corner trap
Two pieces, one corner. In this pattern the bishop is the only piece that touches the king. Park it on a long-diagonal square such as f6, and it looks straight through g7 at a monarch wedged on h8. The rook stays well back, sitting on g1 or anywhere along the file, and its job is simply to own g7 and g8 so the king cannot slide sideways. The defender's own h7 pawn caps the last exit.
That leaves a king with no flight square, no piece to interpose, and no capture. Picture the finished cage: the rook holds the open g-file so g7 and g8 are off limits, the h7 pawn blocks the corner, and the bishop on f6 then checks down the a1-h8 diagonal for mate. The bishop strikes; the rook and the friendly pawn build the walls. Once that division of labor clicks, the positions below read less like a calculation and more like a tally of locked doors.
Reading the position before you solve a Morphy's mate
Three conditions decide whether a Morphy's mate is even on the board, and scanning for them beats grinding through variations. One, the king sits in the corner, almost always after kingside castling, with its rook pawn frozen on h7 (or h2 in the mirror, when Black does the attacking). Two, the g-file is clear, so nothing blunts your rook's hold on g7 and g8. Three, your bishop already covers, or can step onto, the diagonal that ends in that corner.
Drop any one of the three and the mate evaporates. A pawn left on g7 plugs the bishop and gives the rook no open lane. A spare escape square on the seventh rank lets the king stroll out. So read the jailers before the executioner: the rook and the enemy's own pawn fence the king in, and only then does the bishop spring the lock.
Train the Morphy's mate chess puzzles by escape-square, not by guess
My routine on this pattern is a quick roll call of the king's exits before you move anything: g7 sealed, g8 sealed, h7 plugged. If all three already read shut, the answer is the move that checks along the diagonal. If one is still open, the answer is the move that closes it, usually a rook lift or a grab on g7. Naming the squares stops the chase after some showy line the position never needed.
The spots here come from real games, computer-checked, so the corner cages match what shows up over the board. Slide the rating anywhere between 400 and 2400 and you get mates tuned to land near a three-in-four solve. If one jams, three free hints wait: the first calls the motif, the second points at the piece that does the work, the third gives the move.