Skewer Puzzles: Foundation Level

By the numbers

skewer puzzles at foundation level: the numbers

There are 57,833 skewer puzzles at foundation level, solved 51,303,402 times in total. The median rating is 980.

Often combined with

Endgame tactics · 51,641Rook endgame tactics · 19,893Middlegame tactics · 5,928Deflection · 3,466Exposed king · 2,198Queen endgame tactics · 2,069Queen and rook tactics · 1,773Bishop endgame tactics · 1,188

Which openings produce them?

Sicilian Defence · 336Queen's Pawn Game · 205French Defence · 165Caro–Kann Defence · 161Italian Game · 152Queen's Gambit Declined · 101Scandinavian Defense · 86Scotch Game · 84

Counts computed from the full puzzle set.

How the solutions work · counted by a rules engine

What a typical skewer solution looks like

Sample: 2,000 skewer puzzles at foundation level (3.5% of all 57,833).

78.9% need 2 solver moves, 19.4% need 3 solver moves, 1.5% need 4 solver moves. Median rating: 950 for the shortest solutions, 1124 for the longest.

72.4% open with a rook move. The first move captures in 11% and gives check in 97.6%; 0% end in checkmate, 2.2% involve a sacrifice, 51.8% have White to move.

How many moves does the solver need?

Which piece plays the key move?

What does the solver win?

Material balance along the whole line, counting every capture by both sides (pawn 1, minor piece 3, rook 5, queen 9):

How much is left on the board?

How it is counted: every puzzle in the sample is replayed move by move with a chess rules engine. A sacrifice means a piece that is captured on the very next ply and was worth more than what it captured itself (pawn 1, minor piece 3, rook 5, queen 9). Sample of 2,000 puzzles. Percentages are shares of the sample.

Where it happens

Where the key move lands

Where the solver’s first move ends, drawn from their own side (rank 1 is their back rank). Busiest squares: h8 (8.7%), h7 (6.5%), a8 (5.3%), c8 (4%), g8 (3.9%).

Counted from the same 2,000-puzzle sample. Squares under 1% are left blank.