Day 2 - Helpmate

The screen flickers as the anomaly stabilizes. David Snowell wastes no time. “Good work, but this is only the beginning,” he says, gesturing for you and Wesley Snow to follow him deeper into Santa’s Factory. You pass rows of elf engineers monitoring glowing terminals, all casting nervous glances at the blinking red lights overhead.

The three of you enter the Temporal Singularity Chamber, where the centerpiece of Santa’s operation floats: a shimmering black sphere, no larger than a pawn, suspended in midair by a lattice of electromagnetic coils. David points to it. “This is the Kerr-ol Singularity - a stabilized black hole. Its spin creates an ergosphere, a warped region of spacetime. Inside, time slows dramatically. Every second outside the factory stretches into weeks for us. It’s how we produce billions of gifts every year.”

Wesley studies the swirling orb, skeptical. “And if the spin stops?”

David’s face grows serious. “The ergosphere collapses. Without time dilation, we’ll fall behind by 10,000 gifts every second. By the time we stabilize it again, half the world could wake up to an empty tree on Christmas.”

Wesley looks alarmed. “How do we stop that from happening?”

“The first thing we need to do stabilize the singularity is checkmating Black by cooperation.”

This is a helpmate problem, which means that both players cooperate to achieve mate.

With Black to move first, how can White, with Black’s assistance, mate on the third move? Black plays 3 moves and White 3, and White’s 3rd move is mate.