The set up looks very familiar and probably the composer was inspired by something he had seen
One and half star sound good

Difficulty factor: 0.5 Fun factor 9.5

Very illustrative of the nature of the Queen's power: mobility. We tend to think of the Queen as heavy artillery, or a tank. But really she is more cognate, I think, to a band of Asian light horse archers.

Indeed, nothing new. Still there must have been some incentive to post this, which, of course, I have forgotten.

Brilliant example of the failures inherent in playing a purely defensive game. Zugzwang will always undo a solid wall.

This would never occur in a real game. Fun though.

Somewhere on this site there is a puzzle on this kind of theme but way more amusing, and more ridiculous. It was something like mate in 24 moves, it may have been a Sam Loyd creation. It had the black king surrounded by six black rooks and one black pawn, with one escape square, and White had two queens with which to give mate. It was fairly easy but a lot of fun to play out. Maybe someone can locate it and link to it.

This one and #178, the latter longer lasting. Thank you kingdawar!

Timur the Lame owned the iron cage. The Turkish Sultan Bajazet occupied it. So now we know the identities of the respective potentates.