King + Queen vs. King + Knight

So... how exactly do you win when you have a queen and your opponent has a knight?

The knight's ability to attack the king or queen without being attacked back seems to make progress impossible...

The knight can't continuously check or attack the pieces - just watch out for knight forks and wait until he can't give check anymore, then take the initiative and drive his king back with queen checks until you can use a pin or a fork of some kind to win the knight.

Recommendation - if your king gets directly next to his knight (not diagonally - just left/right or above/below it) then it cannot give check to your king.

however you do it, if you could do it, it would be hard

No, it's supposed to be quite easy. You do similar things as you did when trying to mate with queen vs king: eventually trap the king into a "box" until you can mate him. It's just that now he can do knight forks, so definitley watch out for any chance like that. The knight is going to be totally overwhelmed by the queen. Queen vs rook on the other hand, is very difficult.

Wow.  Quick replies.

I went back to the endgame simulator I was using and managed to mate (and recorded the moves).  Both starting positions were randomly generated.  Comments?

A long time ago, I wrote an article about Queen vs Knight with tips:

http://blog.chess.com/likesforests/the-endgame-tactician-queen-vs-knight

I made another forum with the excact same question a long time after this one was made. 

link below

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/what-to-do-in-a-king-knight-endgame-against-a-queen-and-king#last_comment

yeah its not really an endgame worth studying. Just make similar progress in trying to trap the king with the added caveat of watching out for nasty forks. Eventually, the knight will be isolated and fall too a bunch of checks, or end up pinned and lost to king and queen attacking it.

I randomly arranged piece positions in the tablebase. I do not think there is a single position where white is not completely winning

Oh holy crap I just looked at the dates on this.

Who the heck necroposts a forum dated in 2009

Also queen and king vs king and bishop and knight is also a win for the former

It is quite easy. Here is how it is done:

Here are some tips:

• If you put your king and queen on opposite colors, he cannot possibly fork your king and queen.
• If you attack the knight straight below the knight or two diagnols away, it cannot give check to your king.