One Stop, One Checkmate

Your commute has a few dead minutes in it. Spend them on something better than scrolling: one puzzle per stop, one move that wins. 100 mate-in-one positions from real games, rated 400-799, sorted easy to hard. Stop anytime, pick up later, every answer explained.

Think of the gaps in a normal working day: the wait on the platform, the ride between stations, the change of trains, the bus that is running late. None of them is long enough for a real game, and all of them are long enough for one puzzle. Open the book, look at the position, find the move that ends the game, and put the phone away when your stop comes up.

It is written for adult beginners. Each puzzle has one goal: find the single move that delivers checkmate. The puzzles run from easy to hard in three sections, Warm-Up, Steady and Challenge, all rated 400-799 on the standard online puzzle scale, so the early ones build confidence and the later ones make you look twice. A short hint sits under each diagram, and you never need a physical chessboard.

The puzzles are mixed on purpose: two in a row never use the same kind of piece for the winning move (rooks and queens count as one), so you solve each one by reading the board, not by repeating the last answer.

The answer is on the very next screen, with a short explanation of why the mate works, so you can check yourself in seconds and move on. Each puzzle was tested to prove it has a single move that forces mate, then checked again by a chess engine, so you never waste a stop on a trick question.

This is a fixed-layout Kindle edition: one puzzle fills the screen, and it reads the same on a Kindle, a phone or a tablet. No scores to chase and no streaks to keep up, just a small, satisfying win on the way to work and another on the way home.