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. The harder boards are larger and add squares crossed out in red, which no piece can use, so routes have to go around them.

Puzzleship publishes six numbered boards a day, from very easy to ultra hard. The page says the next set is available at midnight your time, but the new set actually goes up at 13:00 UTC, and the countdown on the page counts to that hour. Earlier boards stay in an archive, and there are undo, redo and hint buttons. Solving a board needs no account; signing in keeps your streak. 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.