Chess Takes (Puzzleship)

About Chess Takes (Puzzleship)

Chess Takes turns chess pieces into a routing puzzle. A small board holds a handful of pieces, all effectively yours. Any piece can capture any other using its normal chess move, and every move must be a capture; there are no quiet moves, no opponent and no check or checkmate. You keep capturing until a single piece is left standing. Pawns here capture one square diagonally in any of four directions.

The challenge is the order. Each capture removes a piece and moves the capturer, so an early choice decides what is still reachable later. A promising sequence often dead-ends with two pieces that cannot reach each other. Each puzzle shows a par, the fewest moves it can be done in.

Puzzleship publishes six numbered boards a day, from very easy to ultra hard, available from midnight in your own time zone, and keeps earlier ones in an archive. The site is free with ads, with a premium plan that removes them. A sibling puzzle, Chessolo, gives you one piece that becomes whatever it captures.

It suits anyone who knows how chess pieces move and wants a puzzle without opponents or openings, and fans of peg solitaire style elimination puzzles.

How to play Chess Takes (Puzzleship)

1. Open Chess Takes and pick one of the day's six boards.
2. Click a piece to select it.
3. Click the piece it can capture with its normal chess move; every move must be a capture.
4. Keep capturing until only one piece remains.
5. Try to match the par, then move to the next board or the archive.

Tips

• Decide which piece you want left standing before your first move.
• Pawns make poor survivors; knights and queens keep the most options.
• Find pieces that can only be taken from one square; they fix where earlier captures must end.
• If you get stuck with two unreachable pieces, reset and change the first capture.

Questions