Checkmate patterns
Smothered mate
A knight mates a king that is boxed in on every side by its own pieces. The famous version, Philidor's legacy, ends with a queen given up on g8 so that the rook is forced to take it, filling the last empty square, and the knight then mates on f7.
How to spot it
Look for an enemy king in the corner with a rook beside it and pawns in front. Then check whether your knight has a square that gives check the king cannot answer, and whether a queen check on the diagonal forces the king into the corner first. The whole sequence is forced from beginning to end.
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. Black to play Play it out →Answer
29...Nf2#
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2. Black to play Play it out →Answer
17...Qa1+ 18.Nb1 Na2#
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3. Black to play Play it out →Answer
17...Qa1+ 18.Nb1 Na2#
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4. Black to play Play it out →Answer
21...Ne2#
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5. White to play Play it out →Answer
40.Nh6+ Kh8 41.Qg8+ Rxg8 42.Nf7#
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6. Black to play Play it out →Answer
26...Ng3#
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7. Black to play Play it out →Answer
27...Qxf2+ 28.Kh1 Qf1+ 29.Ng1 Nf2#
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8. White to play Play it out →Answer
33.Qxf7+ Kh8 34.Bxg7+ Nxg7 35.Qf8+ Bg8 36.Nf7#
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9. White to play Play it out →Answer
33.Qxe6+ Rf7 34.Qxf7+ Kh8 35.Qg8+ Rxg8 36.Nf7#
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10. White to play Play it out →Answer
29.Rxf8+ Rxf8 30.Qg8+ Rxg8 31.Nf7#
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11. Black to play Play it out →Answer
18...Qxd4+ 19.Kh1 Qg1+ 20.Rxg1 Nf2#
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12. White to play Play it out →Answer
16.Nxd6#
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.