'Modeling' recent debates using chess

My USCF rating was 1349 in 1969. I played last board for my high school chess team. We were fairly active, playing many tournaments, including the National High School held every year in NYC. I would have done better, but the cheerleaders were distracting. I once beat a 1700! Gaze upon my powers ye mighty and despair! --PercyPS - Apologies to Shelly, here's the poem:

Ozymandias
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked and the heart that fed.

​

"And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

You can learn to play chess well, but unless you're a savant it will take time and you'll probably never be very good. Rent the movie Searching for Bobby Fisher (the actor who plays the father now stars in the current TV hit Joan of Arcadia) and you'll see that the best chess players exhibit a gift for the game at a very young age. There's probably a variety of opinions about this, but my own is that an intelligent adult learning the game for the first time and willing to work long and hard could achieve a USCF rating in the 1800-2000 range within five years. The "work long and hard" part translates as "is completely obsessed by chess and does almost nothing but all the time."You can see the advantages of being a savant.The hardest part of chess for most non-savants without eidetic memories is learning the openings. It is easiest for novices to play white because they can select the opening. A novice playing black can easily find himself in well known (but not to him) traps. When I first started I used the Caro-kahn defense as black because it often put my white opponent in unfamiliar territory, but I had a lot of trouble with d4 openings.--Percy

DU and EC not permitted to answer.List all the moves for the shortest possible mate.--Percy

I'm surprised there's been no takers for the shortest possible mate. Here's a pretty short one with black losing, but there are shorter:1. e4 e5
2. Bc4 Pd6
3. Qh5 Nf6
4. Qf7 mateThis provides a flavor for the type of solution requested. Yes, the loser has to be cooperating in his defeat. This is a puzzle, not an actual game situation. What is the shortest number of moves producing mate?Apologies if my notation is non-standard. The one I originally learned and the only one I really know is no longer used.DU and EC, if you know other examples that aren't the shortest, go ahead and post. Or if you know other easy puzzles...--Percy

Solution to problem 1: Force Black King to hem himself in between his rooks, then mate with Knight. Really neat puzzle!!!I'll look at the other later.--Percy