Takes (CleverGoat)

Takes is the chess game in the CleverGoat family of daily puzzles, which also includes Flipple, Categories, Stacked, CrossHerd and Word Grid. It was introduced on Hacker News by one of its creators, and each day's set carries a game number: Game #274 was up on 18 October 2026.

The board is a small 4x4 square holding a handful of pieces. Each piece moves as in normal chess, and pawns capture diagonally, but every move must be a capture: you drag one piece onto another to take it. You keep going until a single piece remains. If a king is on the board it can never be captured and must make the last capture itself, though it may capture more than once along the way. Undo, a limited number of hints and a restart button help when a line goes wrong, and a timer runs as you play.

Each day brings puzzles at Easy, Medium and Hard, and finishing them unlocks an Expert puzzle. Prev day and Next day buttons let you go back to earlier days. Takes plays in the browser on a desktop or a phone without an account, and inside the CleverGoat app for iOS and Android. The web version shows ads, which a paid option removes.

It suits chess players who like tactics, and puzzle fans who know ThinkFun's Solitaire Chess.