The Comprehensive Chess Puzzle Advent Calendar: 192 Challenges for Adults, Featuring Quick Warm-Ups and Complex Problems with Detailed Solutions Across Eight Categories.

Looking for chess puzzles you can't solve by simply trying every check first? This book was built for exactly that:

• YOU CANNOT SOLVE IT BY TRYING EVERY CHECK: Does working through a puzzle book usually mean running through the checks until one of them works? That approach fails here. In 66 mate puzzles the key move is a quiet move: no check, no capture. A piece simply goes somewhere, and after that Black is lost. Moves like this sit in your blind spot, because in a real game almost everything starts with a check or a capture. Only the eight starter puzzles of the first week may open with a check or a capture, to ease you into the book.

• YOU ALWAYS LEARN WHY YOUR MOVE FAILS: Have you ever read a solution and still not understood what was wrong with your own move? Every solution explains why the key move works and how Black can defend. 57 of the mate puzzles also show the tempting move that fails to exactly one reply. And if you get stuck, every main puzzle names the page of its hint, which tells you what to look for, never the move itself

• EVERY PUZZLE IS PROVEN, NOT JUST CHECKED: Worried that a second solution will spoil a puzzle you spent twenty minutes on? Every position in this book was calculated by computer to the very end: exactly one key move, exactly the stated number of moves, no shorter mate, and every piece on the board has a job. The printed move sequences, all variations and every refutation were verified the same way. You can spend your time on the puzzle instead of doubting it.

This is a book, not a calendar with cardboard doors: one chapter for each day from December 1 to 24, with puzzles that grow harder from door to door. A full door takes 20 to 30 minutes, the warm-ups and one main puzzle about five. Written for players who know the rules well and read notation, roughly rated 1600 to 2000.

Contents of the book:

• 192 puzzles in 24 doors: four warm-ups (mate in one) and four main puzzles a day, every one of them an original
• 8 starter puzzles from practical play for a gentle first week
• 66 mates in two, three and four moves, rising in difficulty through December
• 8 endgame mates with little material, where technique matters more than combination
• 9 defensive puzzles: only one move stops the mate, every other move provably loses
• 6 stalemate saves: hopelessly lost, and a draw is still there to find
• 3 selfmates and 4 helpmates as an excursion into problem chess
• Large vector diagrams and a difficulty rating from one to five stars for every main puzzle
• BONUS: 96 hints at the back of the book and a score table to track what you solved on your own

A demanding Advent for anyone who likes to think before moving: 24 doors that make you work instead of letting you tick them off. I hope you find many of those quiet moves that make you smile once you finally see them.