Last updated on January 4th, 2026 at 11:40 am
Mate in 1 Chess Puzzles – Entertainment Game Review
Mate in 1 Chess Puzzles is a Entertainment/Board/Puzzle game from Gano Technologies LLC, first launched in 22nd April 2010.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 39+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Mate in 1 Chess Puzzles Stand Out
The Ultimate mate in 1 move chess puzzle app!
Sharpen your chess skills with Mate in 1 Puzzles! Beginners and experienced players will enjoy solving these chess problems!
This app has over 180 interactive chess problems ranging from easy to harder puzzles that will challenge you and help improve your chess skills. The object is to finish each game by forcing a checkmate in 1 move. The puzzles consist of a large number of classical puzzles collected from a variety of sources. These puzzles are fun to play and can be enjoyed at your leisure on your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
Mate in 2 chess problems are especially useful for learning to play chess or anyone wanting to improve their skills.
New features added in Version 2.0 include:
-
Completely revamped chess engine that is much stronger
-
Timing clock is displayed while you are working on each puzzle. How long you take to solve a puzzle is stored.
-
New options: more chess piece sets (total of 7) and more colors schemes (total of 7) including wood and marble. (Improved the options menu as well)
-
Social Gaming: Leaderboards to compare the number of puzzles you have solved with your friends and other players. Facebook integration – including the ability to post your progress and ask your friends for help on a puzzle.
-
Universal app – works on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad – high resolution graphics all around (where supported).
For even more chess puzzle challenges check out these apps:
- Mate in 2 Puzzles
- Mate in 3 Puzzles
- Mate in 4+ Puzzles
This Entertainment game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Mate in 1 Chess Puzzles is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 2nd January 2024
Recent improvements include:
- Latest iOS and iPadOS Compatibility updates
- Minor bug fixes
Download & Availability
Mate in 1 Chess Puzzles is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Mate in 1 Chess Puzzles on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Im enjoying the app, some have proven to be a challenge. It be nice to find an app that had a mode thatd let us answer in notation rather than moving the pieces. Seems like itd be helpful to be beginners.
Awesome chess puzzle app! We got the bundle and they are all great but this is our favorite (as chess in one are little easier than the others). Ive really improved since we started doing these. We find ourselves recognizing mates again and again in our games with doing these. Ive used like chess.com or lichess and their puzzles before, but have gotten more out of this app than those by far.
We love anytime anywhere practicing these realistic strategies. Its so rewarding to hear that tight little click for a piece moving. So far we love this app.
Great teachings tool to improve your Chess game.
It improved our game, we noticed we patterns that we never considered before.
Laid out very well, and organized by difficulty. Great for the price v.
Works great for us! But we hope, in a future update that we will be able to turn our iPad sideways to use this app.
The app works wonderfully and this has been very helpful in helping us recognize various different patterns that we might have previously missed.
Great app for sharpening up your endgame process.
We're a fair chess player, but we have a terrible endgame because we have trouble seeing mate possibilities. This app is perfect for us! The interface is clear and easy to use, and the puzzles, while easy mate-in-ones, are well-constructed from a variety of board positions.
Love this app. Our chess game has improved since using it, plus it's just fun to play through the puzzles.
The puzzles were fun and helped improve our chess game.
Helpful for beginner or someone,like us, returning to game after long layoff and needing a brush up.
This is a fantastic way to ease yourself into more complex chess playing. Cut straight to the chase and figure out the best way to set up a checkmate.
We can't say this makes us a better chess player, but we enjoy doing a couple of these puzzles before going to sleep.
This game is fun but not challenging also it is very repetitive in the same moves plz add an expert stage that adds moves like castling and the en passant.
This is cute but there are only 188 puzzles and some of them are very very easy, including some where practically any move will work since White has a Q and 2Rs and other pieces against a lone K. Some puzzles are near duplicates of others — same move, same idea, just a few pieces have been changed. We hope they update it with more puzzles. We used them all up in a about an hour of playing time.
Very well thought out and easy to use.
Helps us easily find mating patterns. Doesn't need wifi to use.
…for beginners with enough puzzles that one may go through them all more than just one time.
This app is a must for all chess lovers.
Great little challenges. Some puzzles we thought were not possible to solve at the time. It is cool to figure them out. This game will definitely improve our (beginner) chess skills.
Teaches us to look for things we otherwise might overlook.
Mate in one is a pleasant pasttime, definitely worth a buck, not really a challenge though. If you want a challenge, go to Mate in Two. Try out the free version to get an idea of what they're like. These are excellent apps.
Given these puzzle require only one move to checkmate they aren't very difficult, but provide a great foundation to learn from and play the mate in 2 and mate in 3 move puzzles. These are nicely organized with variety and progressively harder. The UI (user interface) is good on both the iPhone and iPad.
Just starting out learning chess, we tried a few chess puzzle apps. This one has a decent UI and good pacing.
Lets you reset moves and keeps track of games completed.
Almost 200 mate in one puzzles, arranged thematically, great for learning and refreshing various mate patterns.
Our son and we just finished our first chess camp together and this came on handy.
Simple product, it works, and delivers on claim.
Good puzzles. Some really made us stop and think…good for tactics introduction.
Great fun; nice interface; good set of problems.
This is a great app. We are surprised at how challenging some of these puzzles are even though you are just one move away from check mate. We love it.
As a VERY new chess player we found this interesting, helpful and a lot of fun. Really helped us to understand how each piece moves.
Great for new and average chess players. Keep up the good work.
As a novice, this app helps us see moves and choices we would otherwise miss.
In play, this exercise has helped us to see more checkmates, for and against.
Last puzzle is an "en passant"! Finished app in 1 Hour, moving on to mate in 2! Novice: <–username (chess w/friends).
A couple tricky, others trivial, still good practice for blitz.
It's a great reinforcement of skill too. Love everything about it.
180 puzzles will last you a few days off constant playing. Weeks if played intermittently. Despite being mate in one, a number of puzzles are difficult without trial and error for novices.
This is so cool when we play games we use these mates awesome mates.
As promised this has 180 puzzles and they are good for beginners… They give lot of food to your brain… We really enjoyed these … So much that we bought the next level in a day.
We really enjoy being able to get in some quick practice whenever we have a spare moment. The app is easy to use and is helping our game.
When we started playing Chess everything looked easy but it was sometimes challenging and we hope like it.
We enjoy this game a lot. Mate in one is pretty easy but it still has value as an end game trainer. Mate in two and four are better but when you just want to play a simple chess puzzle, this one is really good.
The greatest check in 1 out there.
Easy to use, gets a player used to looking for that closing move. Ready to move up to Mate in 2 now.
Mate in ones are so vital. Work on them. The format of this app makes it pretty clumsy. When you solve a puzzle you have to click back to the list scroll down and click the next one! Very cumbersome. With done updates it might be better.
It was worth it. We just played all 188 games between last night and tonight and as a novice (some intermediate) level experience, we're glad we made this purchase. Please fix five things: Let us compete against a friend showing side by side times so we know who solved which puzzles faster Save our previous times so we can see our own progress. Make each successive game within each level harder. Some games were just too easy after some tricky ones. It was obvious it was not about our unique experiences playing chess but rather an obvious removal of difficulty. We know certain 'concepts' need to be ingrained but when you have the same setup and the same move for mate, changing only one non involved piece should not qualify it as a 'new game'! Lastly, can you display the instances where we made a mistake but then still found a solution? This would be good in measuring our progress. Thank you.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 4.4
- Size: 6.39 MB
- iOS: 12.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Gano Technologies LLC
Last updated: 2nd January 2024 | Genre: Entertainment, Board | Developer: Gano Technologies LLC