Checkmate patterns
Vukovic's mate
A rook checks a king on the edge, a knight covers the two squares the king could step to, and a third piece defends the rook. Named after Vladimir Vukovic, whose book on the art of attack catalogued the patterns most players learn without ever learning their names.
How to spot it
The king on the edge and your knight two squares away from it diagonally. Then the question is only whether the rook's checking square is defended, and finding the piece to defend it, often a pawn or the king itself, is what turns a check into 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. Black to play Play it out →Answer
35...Nh3+ 36.Kh1 Rh2#
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2. White to play Play it out →Answer
37.Rh7+ Kg8 38.Nf6+ Kf8 39.Rf7#
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3. White to play Play it out →Answer
30.Qxh7+ Kxh7 31.Rh6#
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4. White to play Play it out →Answer
28.Nf6+ Kf8 29.Rxf7#
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5. White to play Play it out →Answer
29.Ng6+ Kg8 30.Rg7#
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6. Black to play Play it out →Answer
41...Nf6+ 42.Kh6 Rg6#
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7. Black to play Play it out →Answer
44...Ng1+ 45.Kg3 Rg2#
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8. Black to play Play it out →Answer
38...Rxg2+ 39.Kxg2 f3+ 40.Kh2 Rf2+ 41.Kg1 Rg2#
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9. Black to play Play it out →Answer
32...Ra4+ 33.Kxa4 Nc5+ 34.Ka5 Rb5#
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10. White to play Play it out →Answer
31.Bh7+ Kh8 32.Nxf7+ Kxh7 33.Rg7#
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11. Black to play Play it out →Answer
43...Rf2+ 44.Ke1 Nd3+ 45.Kd1 Rd2#
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12. Black to play Play it out →Answer
39...Rb7+ 40.Ka3 Rc3+ 41.Ka4 Ra3+ 42.Kxa3 Nc4+ 43.Ka4 Rb4#
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.