The Plachutta is a device found in chess problems wherein a piece is sacrificially positioned in blockade to deny coverage of multiple distant squares required by the opposition.
The Plachutta is named after Joseph Plachutta (1827–1883), and related to a number of other problem themes: it can be regarded as a Würzburg–Plachutta brought about by a sacrifice on the critical square (a Würzburg-Plachutta itself being a pair of Holzhausen interferences); or it can be thought of as a Novotny with similarly moving (rather than differently moving) black pieces involved (a Novotny itself being a Grimshaw brought about by a white sacrifice on the critical square).
A more sophisticated modern example is the award-winning mate-in-four problem to the right by Aleksandr N. Pankrat'ev and Josip Varga, which was published in Sahovski Glasnik in 1991 and won 1st prize.
Black's two main defenses are the two captures on e3, but each one allows a different Plachutta interference by White on move 2.
One example is to the right, a position which occurred in a 1914 game between Siegbert Tarrasch (with white) and a team of opponents consisting of Davide Marotti (who became the champion of Italy in 1921), E. Napoli, de Simone, and del Giudice.