YES, it’s that time of year when your correspondent searches through his library, and nowadays the web, for half a dozen puzzles to keep you all amused when the Christmas festivities start to flag. With one exception, I have tried to make them accessible to solvers of all levels of experience, although that doesn’t mean they can be cracked without a fair amount of effort.

Diagram 1 is a standard “mate in two” — that is, it is White’s move (it nearly always is in composed problems), and however Black replies White’s second move will deliver checkmate.

If you have never tried one of these before, have a go and see whether you like the challenge. With two-movers it is always possible simply to test every legal starting move, but after a while you will speed up the process by spotting familiar patterns.

Moving on, Diagram 2 is a “mate in three” and Diagram 3 is a “mate in four” — even for newcomers, these terms should be self-explanatory. Diagram 4 requires White to mate in eight moves, which sounds daunting but, in fact, once you’ve found the idea it’s quite straightforward.

This is one of my favourites, and I may even have used it in an earlier quiz, but if so that was a long time ago.

Diagram 5 features a genre which was developed particularly for this time of year, and you have to work out which festive item is represented by the shape of the pieces on the board. After you’ve done that, it’s also a mate in two problem, and not a terribly difficult one.

For those who thought this year’s selection was a bit too easy, Diagram 6 is quite another matter. Here it is Black to move, and he is, of course, comprehensively checkmated. However, this is not a legal position, since there is no legal move that White could just have played which would have created it.

Your task is to change one or more of the white pieces to black, in order to produce a position which could have resulted from a sequence of legal moves. You must then discover which move White has just played. There is a solution but, more interestingly, it is unique.

It only remains for me to wish all readers Merry Christmas, and the best of luck with the quiz.