Today's Daily Puzzle And Bonus Puzzle Solution: Smother Your Opponent With Love

Hello all! Well, I know I promised to post the solution back last week but my family and I decided to go on a last-minute staycation so I've been a bit away from the computer. Sooo, without further delay, let's first give some shoutouts to all of you that solved my bonus puzzle!

The winners are:

Maximillian99
plato99
neatgreatfire
Shunterize
Emil_Mathew
MAAKASU
joep3b99
shashm
the_chess_child

Well done to all of you! You get 50 neon points each! (I don't know what this means...but it sounds special).

Here's the puzzle solution with my commentary below. In my mind the really amazing move here is Qe4!! What a great deflection sacrifice to put black in a boatload of trouble:

Today's Daily Puzzle

Today's puzzle employs the theme of smothered mate. In a previous post, I discussed the common idea of smothered mate with knight and queen. The idea being you sacrifice your pieces to achieve a position that forced your opponent to surround pieces around his king in order to deliver a mate. In today's case, a bishop and queen team up to achieve the same outcome:

Last Saturday's Puzzle

Lastly, as I was not able to cover last Saturday's puzzle and I had received some requests to go over it, I have the very interesting zugzwang-themed puzzle with analysis below. One thing I'll mention about insane puzzles like the one below is that I wouldn't really use your ability/inability to solve puzzles like this to gauge your endgame strength. Rather, I suggest of course giving it your best shot but allowing the solution to teach you some facet of the game/way of thinking that you could employ in your games. In this case, it's being able to identify when your opponent has no good moves and finding creative ways to pass your turn. Enjoy!

How did you do on the puzzles? Comment below!

Nick

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