I know about the 2 move mate where the 2 side pawns move up and the Queen comes in and delivers a swift checkmate, but what if the Queen was not being used, or wasn't on the board in the first place?
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1 Answer
White's third move can already be a Queenless mate:
[Title "Look, Ma, no Queen (checkmate on White's move 3)"]
[FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w - - 0 1"]
1. e4 g5!? 2. Be2?! f6?? 3. Bh5#
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1A knight takes 3 moves: 1.e4 Nc6 2.Ne2 Ne5 3.c4 Nd3# It's a fun puzzle to try R, P or even K. (It is easy to get 5 for R and P and 6 for K. Can you do better?) Commented Jun 18 at 16:10
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Looks like a question for François Labelle. For P there's a 4.0 move helpmate, 1 e3 e5 2 Ke2 Qh4 3 Kf3 pass 4 Q(B,N)e2 e4#. An example of 4.5 by R is Benko's old puzzle: White opens with 1 a3 and mates on move 5 with a Rook. King 5.0: 1 f3 e5 2 Kf2 Ke7 3 Kg3 Kf6 4 Kh4 d6 5 g3 Kg6#. Commented Jun 18 at 16:46
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Ah, the old question (recently warmed up by problemist Peter Schmidt in his book on this theme): Who gives the mate? In case of a discovered check, like in your example, two pieces are involved. (I'm in the "the moving piece" cabal; writing "mate by an X move" circumsteps the whole issue.) Commented Jun 19 at 7:56
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Well you asked for a K mate, which in orthodox chess can only mean that the K moves to discover check -- or I suppose castling, but that's really a separate task. None of the other examples were discovered check so the "old question" is moot. Commented Jun 19 at 13:53