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Can the knight and king in anyway mate a queen and knight?

I was recently playing a game which I lost. The player with the king and queen was playing suboptimally. On the last move I captured a pawn with the queen since I was low on time. enter image description here

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  • You probably lost because time ended before you completed your move. Otherwise the game would have been drawn
    – David
    Aug 6, 2020 at 6:24

2 Answers 2

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No. The problem is that the queen covers too many squares.

Consider this (illegal) checkmate position with king and 2 knights vs king and queen:

[fen "kq6/2N5/KN6/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1"]

If you remove either knight then the queen can take the other one.

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  • That's very well put!
    – Kortchnoi
    May 17, 2020 at 13:49
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As far as I know, regardless of the opponent's skill or number of pawns/pieces, it is impossible to Checkmate using only a knight and a king, since the knight can't cover enough squares to completely block the opponent's king.

Hope this helps.

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  • It's more complicated than that, in general a king can be blocked in by his own peice(s) reducing the number of squares that the opponent needs to cover. This is not possible in this particular case though for the reason described in Brian's answer. May 18, 2020 at 14:51

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