Mate in Two

3 puzzles · 60 sec each

Take the #1 spot

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Mate in Two: Three Forced Checkmates Against the Clock

Mate in Two is a free daily chess puzzle game on Quizebra. Every day you get three positions in which you can force checkmate in two moves, whatever your opponent does, the first easy, the second harder and the third hard, and you have sixty seconds to solve each one. Your score is your total time over all three, so the leaderboard rewards finding the right idea quickly. Everyone in the world gets the same three puzzles each day.

What Is a Mate in Two Puzzle?

A position where you can force checkmate on your second move, whatever the opponent replies. The first move, the key, is often quiet and is never itself a mate here: puzzles where the first move already mates are left out, so every one is a real two-mover. If you spot a mate in one that Lichess missed, it counts too.

How Do You Play Mate in Two?

Each puzzle starts by playing the opponent’s last move, so you can see what you are answering, and the board is turned so that the side you play is at the bottom. Then the clock starts. Tap a piece, then tap the square you want it to go to. Your first move has to be the key move that forces the mate, unless you can mate at once, which also counts. The computer then plays the defender’s reply from the puzzle, and your second move has to give checkmate; any mating move counts. You get one try at each move: a move that is not part of the solution loses the puzzle, and so does running out of time. Either way the solution is shown and the round counts as the full sixty seconds.

You get one ranked set a day. After that you can play practice sets without limit; they do not go on the leaderboard.

Where Do the Puzzles Come From?

All of them come from the Lichess puzzle database, which is free and public: positions from real games played on Lichess, checked by computer to have a single solution. Only puzzles played at least 200 times on Lichess and rated well by the players there are used. Each day’s three are taken from three difficulty bands by their Lichess rating, so the set always climbs.

Tips for Faster Mates

The key move is often quiet. When no check works at once, look for a move that takes the last escape square from the king or brings one more piece to the attack, so that every reply leaves a mate. Checks are still worth trying first, and so is the question of what the opponent’s last move gave up.

When Do the Puzzles Reset?

New puzzles arrive at midnight London time, with a fresh leaderboard. Free, no account, no ads.

The other chess games are Mate in One, Juicers and Horde, and the best player across all four each day is the Daily ChessWhiz.

Puzzles from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0). The chess pieces are Chessnut by Alexis Luengas (Apache 2.0), with the bishop from the cburnett set by Colin M.L. Burnett (BSD), slightly altered.