white to move, m1

White to move, mate in 1! Don’t cheat, and if you get stuck I’ll give a hint, but it’s white to move and M1.

Good one! Here is a similar position but with a different solution. Mate in 1.

Is it white to move?

Good question but you can answer it yourself! To find the solution you'll need to examine the last move just as in your puzzle but the reason is different!

The OP puzzle is not M1, confirmed with analysis. I left off the lines so there are no spoilers:

Ditto with the second posted puzzle... assuming it's white to move.

@MrKoovy: You are absolutely wrong on both puzzles but that is only natural once you sell your soul to the engine devil

Well..... there's also the FENs, which show that en passant is not possible in the first puzzle and that it's white to move in the second puzzle

Why don't you trust the engine?

If you think it is mate in one, tell me what it is.

If you don't tell me, I will have to assume you realize there is no mate in one.

No one has ever authorized you can or should access the FEN to solve a puzzle. Many chess players have no clue what a FEN is. The composer should always make sure you can get the required information from either the diagram, or whatever you can conclude by analyzing it, or from explicit text, or from the default agreements. For instance - if there is no explicit information on who starts and plays in what direction - you are to assume that white starts and plays bottom to top. Unless you can prove that is impossible. Whatever you can prove always overrides the default agreements and the FEN.

Note that this is a consequence of the poor design of the Puzzle GUI and the impossibility to reflect all puzzle information in the FEN. 

I’ve dm’ed you the solution, goofy

Also I set up a position on mine, didn’t give the whole game. Goofy ahh

Why would you ever want to give the whole game? The default agreements and the diagram analysis are sufficient to solve your and my puzzle. FENs don't matter, engines don't matter, the rotten Puzzle GUI does not matter!

Hahahahaha! The answer is: the engine solves the wrong puzzles! 

ah i think i got it… it’s black to move, black moves his b pawn to b6 or b5, and white goes qe4#

Again, there is an agreement in the community of chess composers and solvers, assuming that a chess position is not just a chess position, but it is a moment in a game. That is the assumption that allows both puzzles to solve. Anyone who is not in possession of this secret will find these unsolvable. Therefore these are more like "joke puzzles" than actual puzzles.

That is heavily overstated. The Puzzle field is a completely decent mathematical model of the deterministic chess game system. Cases like this one are precisely the reason why Model Theory was developed over a century ago and has grown to one of its most powerful components. Puzzles are inherently different from games by lacking information and it is supplemented by choice rules in order to take advantage of the parts of the game that do apply to puzzles. E.g., without knowing who starts you never get to the point of deciding which moves are legal to play in a puzzle solution!

Note that math takes advantage of the same logic by translating ZFC Set-Theory into Peano Arithmetic. ZFC Set-Theory turns out to be a pretty good model of Arithmetic with very few undecidables.

Also note that there is one place where the chess puzzle world has gone completely mad by violating the boundaries of model choices. Model Theory says that when you hide a black and a white pawn behind your back, your opponent can only choose the black or the the white pawn and not a "Chinese weather balloon". The current generation of rule dino's denies that. They will be arrested in the Global Reset.

Last note: Joke puzzles always violate one of the game rules or one of the choice rules though the latter is rare. The puzzles in this topic do neither and are therefore no joke puzzles.

Both problems here are good introductory examples of retro-analytical compositions, a genre that requires solvers to deduce what occurred before the diagram position is reached. Retro problems employ the standard rules of chess but could involve certain conventions that the average chess players may not be familiar with, hence the confused reactions of some posters here.

The OP problem correctly uses the convention regarding e.p. capture permission. See this blog for details: Chess problem conventions re castling and capturing en passant.

Arisktotle's problem uses a convention regarding turn-to-play: in any mate-in-n problem, White starts (and forces mates), unless it can be proved by retro-analysis that it must be Black's turn, in which case Black commences play.

Engines are not programmed to do retro-analysis (i.e. use logic to deduce previous moves), hence they are totally incapable of solving such problems. FEN info is completely irrelevant in a chess composition, which by definition doesn't come from an actual game.

Retro problems assume orthodox rules in the play leading to the diagram position, and so definitely are not "joke problems". Joke problems typically involve unorthodox rules that are also hidden from the solver. Fairy problems (a much bigger category than joke problems) involve unorthodox rules that are specified to the solver.

Thank you

My point was that these puzzles introduce a hidden rule, that is completely impossible to deduce on your own, and also seems completely unreasonable. Without knowing that hidden rule, these puzzles are not solvable, demonstrated by the engine (who does not know that rule).

To demonstrate my point, let's take your puzzle (from post nr 2). There is another solution to that puzzle. It's white to move, and mate in 1! Think about it.

The solution is, of course, Qa0 mate!

The hidden rule that there is a secret 0th line on a chessboard is of course just a joke, and it is arbitrary and weird. But it is not more arbitrary or more weird than the assumption that all is part of a real game, arrived by legal moves from the standard starting position.