Checkmate patterns
The triangle mate
The queen mates from beside the king, supported by a rook standing behind her at a distance, the three pieces forming a triangle. A rook-and-queen mate that needs no other pieces and comes up whenever a king has been pushed to the edge of the board.
How to spot it
Look for the king on an edge file or rank with your queen able to reach the square next to it, and check what supports her. A rook on the same line as the queen, two or more squares away, is the shape, and it is usually already there.
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
39.Rg4+ Kh5 40.Qe8+ g6 41.Qxg6#
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2. Black to play Play it out →Answer
36...Re1+ 37.Kf2 Qe3#
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3. White to play Play it out →Answer
31.Bxf7+ Kxf7 32.Qe6#
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4. White to play Play it out →Answer
33.Rg5+ Kf7 34.Qc7+ Bd7 35.Rxd7+ Nxd7 36.Qxd7+ Kf6 37.Qg7#
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5. White to play Play it out →Answer
42.Qh4+ Kg7 43.Qh8#
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6. Black to play Play it out →Answer
29...Rxg4+ 30.hxg4 Rxg4+ 31.Kh1 Qd1+ 32.Kh2 Qg1+ 33.Kh3 Qg2#
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7. Black to play Play it out →Answer
40...Re1+ 41.Kd2 Qe3#
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8. Black to play Play it out →Answer
36...Rc2+ 37.Kb1 Qa2#
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9. Black to play Play it out →Answer
33...h2+ 34.Kh1 Rf1+ 35.Kxh2 Qh5+ 36.Kg2 Qh1#
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10. White to play Play it out →Answer
38.Rg8+ Kd7 39.Qd8+ Kc6 40.Qd6+ Kb7 41.Rb8+ Ka7 42.Qb6#
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11. White to play Play it out →Answer
40.Qf5+ Ke7 41.Rd7+ Ke8 42.Qf7#
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12. Black to play Play it out →Answer
32...Qc1+ 33.Bc2 Qe1+ 34.Kb2 Qa1#
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.