Windmill
A tactical pattern in which a rook and bishop repeatedly deliver discovered check, capturing material with each cycle.
The attacking side alternates between checking with the discovered piece and capturing with the moving piece, cycling back and forth like a windmill's turning blades while methodically destroying the opponent's position.
Etymology
The windmill is a 20th-century English coinage, named for the visual rhythm of the tactic itself: a rook and bishop combination that alternates between delivering discovered check and capturing material, over and over, resembling the cyclical, repetitive turning of a windmill's blades. The Oxford University Press's survey of chess linguistics groups the windmill alongside the x-ray attack and skewer as a 20th-century addition to English chess vocabulary — part of a broader pattern in which newly systematized tactical ideas received vivid, everyday English names rather than borrowed or Latinate terminology, continuing the tradition set earlier by "pin" and "fork." One of the most famous illustrations of the pattern in top-level play is Carlos Torre's windmill combination against Emanuel Lasker at Moscow 1925, still used to teach the idea today.
Translations
| Language | Term | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Arabic | طاحونة (tahuna) | Literally "mill." |
| Dutch | molen | Literally "mill." |
| French | moulinet | Literally "little mill/pinwheel." |
| German | Mühle | Literally "mill." |
| Italian | mulino | Literally "mill." |
| Polish | młynek | Literally "little mill." |
| Portuguese | moinho | Literally "mill." |
| Russian | мельница (mel'nitsa) | Literally "mill." |
| Spanish | molinillo | Literally "little mill/windmill." |
| Turkish | değirmen | Literally "mill." |