Puzzles (used to be called tactics) are a great way to improve your rating through practice and pattern recognition. To do puzzles, tap on 'puzzles' on the toolbar on the bottom of your screen:
There are four ways you can do puzzles on Chess.com. You will see all three options on the screen when you go to puzzles. These are Rated, Puzzle Rush, Puzzle Battle, Daily Puzzle and Custom.
Rated puzzles
Playing rated puzzles will give you a puzzle or ‘tactics’ rating in much the same way you get a chess rating. If you get a puzzle right, your rating goes up, if you get it wrong, it goes down.
The amount that your rating changes depends on how fast you complete the puzzle, and also what the rating of the puzzle is compared to your puzzle rating. As your puzzles rating goes up, your chess rating is sure to follow! Keep practicing!
Puzzle Rush
Puzzle rush is a fast-paced, exciting way to learn tactics! In puzzle rush you can choose a 3 or 5 minute time limit to solve as many puzzles as you can, or choose Survival for unlimited time. But if you get three wrong, the game ends no matter how much time you have left. Getting puzzles right or wrong in puzzle rush mode will not affect your puzzle rating, so don’t worry, and aim for that high score!
When you tap on 'Rush' you will have 3 choices of how to play:
Choose 3 minute, 5 minute, or Survival. Survival mode has no time limit! Take as long as you like and see how far you can go before you get 3 wrong!
Each mode has a separate leaderboard. Your top scores for the day, and all time will be displayed in each mode.
Try to beat your high score!
Puzzle Battle
Play Puzzle Battle to challenge an opponent to a battle of puzzle solving skills! Each player will be given the same series of puzzles, and whoever can solve the most without getting 3 wrong will be the winner! Read more about Puzzle Battle here!
Daily puzzle
Tap on this to see the Daily Puzzle. Have fun solving the puzzle and discussing it with the community in the forum! You can find the forum post for each daily puzzle here.
Custom puzzles
Custom mode will give you the same puzzles as rated mode, except there is no time pressure, and no winning or losing points, just learning!
After you tap on 'Custom' you will be able to choose a specific type of problem to focus on, or choose to do do all puzzle types, or only puzzles you have failed. You can also set a rating range of puzzles you want to do:
To start doing puzzles tap on the puzzles want to do. For example , tap on 'all themes' or 'puzzles I missed,' or select any number of themes (those with a checkmark in the screenshot are selected) then tap 'Start' to start doing those puzzles.