I'm at the Escher museum in The Hague, and one of the prints of Metamorphoses contains a particular chess pattern that I found interesting. It's called a smothered mate, where a lone piece deliverscheckmate to the opposing king despite it being surrounded by many allied pieces.

Was Escher a chess player (presumably he was, to know of such a motif), and was there a reason he included this particular pattern in his print?