Interference
A tactic in which a piece is placed between two enemy pieces to break their coordination, often exploiting a pin or defense.
Interference typically disrupts a defender's ability to protect a piece or square by inserting a sacrificial piece directly onto the line connecting the defender to what it protects.
Etymology
The verb interfere appears mid-15c. as enterferen “intermingle or mix, interpose.” The noun interference dates from 1783 (“intermeddling”), was coined in its physics sense by Thomas Young in 1802, and Etymonline dates the specialised chess sense to 1913. That date sits naturally in the problem-composition world, where the mechanism had long been named after composers rather than described: the Grimshaw, in which a rook and bishop arriving on one square mutually interfere, is named after the 19th-century problem composer Walter Grimshaw, and the Novotny, a Grimshaw forced by a sacrifice on the critical square, is named after a problem from 1854 by Antonín Novotný (though the first example was composed by Henry Turton in 1851). The generic English word thus arrives after the eponymous problem themes it generalises.
First documented: 1913
Translations
Translations for this term haven't been added yet.