In chess, a grotesque is a problem or endgame study which features a particularly unlikely or impossible initial position, especially one in which White fights with a very small force against a much larger black army.
This position in Forsyth-Edwards Notation (FEN) is: 8/8/8/2p5/1pp5/brpp4/qpprpK1P/1nkbn3 w - - 0 1 The solution is: The fact that the black queen must be on a1 rather than a2 when White plays Nxb3 explains why 2.h4?
This is achieved by sacrificing most of his already small force to compel Black to repeat moves: Otherwise 2.Ne2+ leads to mate.
Similar play to that found in grotesques such as these may also be found in very long moremovers (problems with the stipulation "White to play and checkmate Black in no more than n moves", where n is very high, sometimes over 100), known as longmovers, of which Ottó Bláthy was also a notable composer.
With the knights locked in place and the king unable to leave the back rank except for f2, White must carefully shuffle the king and rooks around each other until the queen receives enough support for a sacrificial breakthrough: and the connected passed b- and c-pawns will queen in short order.