[ANewFormation]

The thing that makes the puzzle neat is that it's one that a reasonably clever person who literally just learned the rules of chess should be able to solve.

There's no nuance to it whatsoever beyond needing to demonstrate knowledge of the rules of the game.

[plorkyeran]

I think you have completely forgotten what it is like to be a beginner at chess if you think that someone who has just learned the rules of the game would be able to identify that the best move is to underpromote a pawn to force a draw.

[ANewFormation]

It's not about forcing a draw but recognizing that the only reasonable move loses the queen immediately.

Assessing the ending is irrelevant. All one needs to know is that having 1 piece is better than having 0 pieces. Not actually always true, but that's the beauty of this puzzle - you don't need anything other than the most basic logic to correctly solve it, at least the first move.