Yup! I took the draw! Guess I forgot that King and Knight can indeed mate as long as there's at least one enemy pawn left..

<83.?>

Material: White, ♘ vs ♙ endgame

Candidates: <[Nd3]>

A somewhat famous position, bringing about the only potential setup where a knight defeats a pawn, the opposite being more common in combinatory chess but the material ending is usually a draw. Here, White has the Black king merciless on the a-file, forcing him to move down the a-pawn where he doesn't want to. After:

<83.Nd3 Ka1 84.Nc1> this forces a2, and by this time White should also have its scope on b3. By playing Nb4? Black draws by just making a move, as either White move after a2 leads to a draw by stalemate or insufficient material.

It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say “this is good, this is bad,” you have already jumped onto the thought process.

It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great suprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, A watcher.

And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty.

<That’s the moment of enlightenment.> That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being.”

White wins if he can get to here:

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Black draws if he can keep shuttling his king between a1 and a2 or if he can get to his King to a1 and his pawn to a2 without white being able to give a knight check: eg

83. Na4? Ka1 84. Nc3 a2

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Drawn - unless white wants to commit suicide.

So in order to win, white needs to force Ka1/a2 and be in a position to land Nb3# immediately afterwards. The only way to force a2 is to cover it with the knight (otherwise black will just play Ka2). So white needs to park his knight on a square which is a knight move away from a2 and b3.

There is only one square on the board which is a knight move away from a2 and b3 - c1. Now all that is left to do is to plot a route to c1. The immediate 83. Nb3 is an insta-stalemate, so that just leaves Nd3-Nc1-Nb3#

Lucid thoughts, neatly put. I was hoping that somehow you would deal with the alternative template too;

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It is an equally good solution but I failed to find the cerebral wherewithal to fill this template with appropriate moves.

I tried but being w/o an engine I did not find adequate resourcefulness/ingenuity. I do not know if tablebases have an answer.

83.Nd3 Ka1
84.Nc1! a2
85.Nb3#

It's all forced, but not so easy to notice.

Time to check.

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Indeed, a pity black resigned one move before the mate.

But at least you made the effort. Next time you see such positions you will or might see the solution. Remember that GMs (and others) etc study thousands of problems, mates and position types.

(Soltis describes this method of study (combinations and positional ideas) in "Studying chess made easy" by Andrew Soltis. )

If we want to end up here ...

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Then the move before this must have been for white to play Nb3#. That means that the knight must have been on a5, c5, d4 or d2.

Rewinding one more move, we find that black must have played a3-a2. It's his only legal move.

So we have four positions to consider. Here's the first:

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It's black to play. In order to get to our desired position, he has to play 1... a2 2. Nb3#

But what is to stop him from playing 1... Ka2? Then I don't see how white makes progres.