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Openings › Mate in one › November 2025 › Exercise 3 of 4

Mate in one: Black to move (exercise m1-728aae278c)

Black to move and mate in one. In this position Black can give checkmate with one move. The position comes from a rated Lichess game of November 2025.

Last move: 48.Nd3 (White's knight from b4 to d3); its two squares are marked on the board.

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Pick a piece, then its square. Keyboard: Tab to the board, arrow keys to move, Enter or Space to pick.

Hint 1: which piece?

Look for a knight move.

Hint 2: which square?

The mating move goes to d5.

Show the solution

One move gives checkmate:

  1. Nd5# (e7 to d5). After this move, the black knight on d5 gives check to the white king on e3, and White has no legal move: checkmate. The white king on e3 has no safe square to go to (d2, d3, d4, e2, e4, f2, f3 and f4). Its own knight on d3, pawn on d4 and pawn on f3 stand in the way. d2 is covered by the black rook on g2. e2 is covered by the black rook on g2. e4 is covered by the black pawn on f5. f2 is covered by the black rook on g2. f4 is covered by the black knight on d5 and the black pawn on g5. No white piece can capture the black knight on d5. A knight's check cannot be blocked.

Our code tried every legal move of Black in this position: this is the only move that gives checkmate.

The position as text

Where this exercise comes from

The position comes from a rated game in our sample of the Lichess open database (CC0 1.0), from the monthly file of November 2025. From a game that began with the Horwitz Defense. In that game Black gave checkmate with the next move. We show no player names and no link to the game. Our code tried every legal move of the position and lists every move that gives checkmate; the list, the hints and the explanations are checked again each time the site is built. How the exercises are chosen: Mate in one and How it works.