Solving the 'double whammy'

Actual conversation with a friend [a player, but not so much a problemist]:

When I retire, I might try to learn how to compose problems.

What kind are you making?

Oh, just mate in 2 or mate in 3s. I kinda like these Double Whammies too, they might be easier to create.

Oh, ok. #2/3 is a good place to start. But what is a `double whammy`?

White makes 2 moves in a row to mate Black. 1st move cannot be a check (or allowing White to be in check). The Cafe Chess newsletter featured these a few weeks ago in a couple of issues.

ahh. those are also called `series` problems. but they`re usually longer than 2 moves. 🙂

I think they mentioned Triple Whammies and Quadruple Whammies in the article, but Doubles were all they gave. I solved them all but a couple took me 30 minutes, which is about the time I get bored with a problem if I haven`t solved it by then.

They actually called them `whammies`?

I`d never heard of any series problems shorter than 4-5 moves [and those usually had more than one solution]. So, off I went to google...

www.chesscafe.com/text/puzzling07.pdf

...and the first one on the page is:



So basically white takes two turns in a row. He can`t check black until the last turn. The goal is to mate the black K on the 2nd move.

Right away I recognized this as the work of a chessplayer - obviously made to resemble a real game, even though most of the pieces have no bearing on the solution.

The Bishops have h7 and h8 locked down, so a Queen battery on the h-file won`t work. Time to use the power of the `whammy` to get away with things we could never do in a real game:



A problemist is used to something more like this:
M Tomasevic/R Tomasevic
Problemkiste 07/1988

"109x whammy" [doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, so...]
series mate in 109 moves

Experience makes most of the first moves obvious. There are black pieces forming a 'chain of protection' - Rg5 protects Ng1 which protects Rh3 which protects Bh1, etc. - the wK must methodically eliminate them in that order. Mainly, the challenge is keeping an accurate move count: it takes 18 moves to kill the g5 Rook, so we write down 18.Kxg5; then back to g1 which gives 37.Kxg1, etc. Eventually the pieces will be eliminated, probably resulting in the promotion of the white f-pawn. Then the hard work of finding an actual mate begins. Because I'm already late to work, I'll let interested readers take it from there. 🙂

For the the readers interested in only the shorter 'whammies', here are some from the chess cafe article:




white to move - 'double whammy'




'double whammy'
This one took my friend 30 minutes to solve. Can you improve on his time?



Please PM solutions so that everyone can solve. Thanks.