Checkmate patterns
The Arabian mate
A knight on f6 and a rook on h7 mate a king on h8. The knight covers the two escape squares and defends the rook, and the rook does the rest. It is one of the oldest recorded mates in the game, from shatranj, where the queen and bishop were far weaker and this was how attacks finished.
How to spot it
A king in the corner and a knight two squares diagonally from it is the picture. The knight is doing three jobs at once, so the whole tactic is usually about getting the rook to the seventh rank safely, and it can be sacrificed on the way in because the knight is what makes it mate.
The positions
Easiest first. Every one is from a real game, and the rating under each board is what it costs the players who have tried it on lichess.
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1. White to play Play it out →Answer
29.Nf6+ Kh8 30.Rg8#
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2. Black to play Play it out →Answer
38...Nxf2+ 39.Rxf2 Rg1#
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3. White to play Play it out →Answer
38.Nf6 a2 39.Rh7#
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4. Black to play Play it out →Answer
46...Nf3+ 47.Kh1 Rh2#
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5. White to play Play it out →Answer
33.Nf6+ Kh8 34.Qxh7+ Qxh7 35.Rxh7#
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6. White to play Play it out →Answer
26.Rxh7+ Qxh7 27.Rxh7#
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7. White to play Play it out →Answer
33.Nf6 Rh3 34.Rg8+ Rxg8 35.Rxg8#
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8. Black to play Play it out →Answer
27...Rxh2+ 28.Rxh2 Qg2+ 29.Rxg2 Nf3+ 30.Bh7 Rxh7+ 31.Rh2 Rxh2#
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9. Black to play Play it out →Answer
26...Qg2+ 27.Rxg2 Nf3+ 28.Kh1 Rxh3+ 29.Rh2 Rxh2#
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10. White to play Play it out →Answer
29.Qf6+ Qg7 30.Qxg7+ Rxg7 31.Nf6+ Rh7 32.Rxh7#
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11. White to play Play it out →Answer
40.Ng6+ fxg6 41.Qxh6+ gxh6 42.Rh7#
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12. White to play Play it out →Answer
30.Qxg7+ Rxg7 31.Nf6+ Kh8 32.Re8+ Rg8 33.Rxg8#
Reading about a pattern is the easy half. Motify finds the positions where you missed one, by running your own lichess and Chess.com games through Stockfish, and puts each of them behind two or three puzzles on the same idea so you meet it having just found it three times. See how Motify works.
Positions from the lichess puzzle database, released under CC0.