X-Ray Chess Puzzles
Free x-ray chess puzzles. Practice using a piece's power through another piece to attack targets behind it — a subtle but powerful motif. Free to practise, graded easy to hard, no login required.
About x-ray puzzles
An x-ray tactic works through a piece rather than around it: your rook or queen exerts pressure on a square beyond an intervening piece, so that when that piece moves or is captured, the pressure lands. It is closely related to the skewer and the pin but harder to see, because the decisive line is currently blocked. Training x-ray vision changes how you read a position — you begin to notice what your pieces would attack if the board cleared, which is exactly how strong players spot resources that look impossible.
How to train x-ray
A x-ray is a shape, not a sequence. Once you can spot the shape you will find the move in seconds instead of calculating from scratch, so train for recognition speed: glance, name the pattern, then verify.
Questions
How many x-ray puzzles are there?
Enough that you will not repeat them — this set is drawn from a library of over 1,000,000 puzzles taken from real games, graded from easy to hard.
What level is this suitable for?
Children from about age 5 upward, once they know how the pieces move, through to rated tournament players. Start on the easy set and move up when you are solving most of them at a glance.