Scholar's Mate

Scholar here carries its older sense of a schoolboy or novice rather than a learned person, so the name marks the mate as a beginner's trick. Wikipedia states that Scholar's mate was named and described in The Royall Game of Chesse-Play, a 1656 text by Francis Beale which adapted the work of the early chess writer Gioachino Greco, where the heading reads The Schollers Mate. The mate is delivered by the queen supported by the light-squared bishop against the weak f7 or f2 square, and it is also known as the four-move checkmate, schoolboy's mate, which better conveys the sense of novice, and Blitzkrieg. A July 1879 article in the magazine Belgravia mentions scholar's mate in connection with the Mephisto automaton. Other languages name the same pattern shepherd's mate, shoemaker's mate, children's mate, school mate, Napoleon's mate or barber's mate, all of which similarly cast the loser as unskilled.

First documented: 1656 — Francis Beale, The Royall Game of Chesse-Play (1656), adapting Gioachino Greco, where the mate appears as The Schollers Mate