Chess is a board game for two players. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games such as xiangqi and shogi.
A chessboard is a gameboard used to play chess. It consists of 64 squares, 8 rows by 8 columns, on which the chess pieces are placed. It is square in shape and uses two colours of squares, one light and one dark, in a chequered pattern. During play, the board is oriented such that each player's near-right corner square is a light square.
The rules of chess govern the play of the game of chess. Chess is a two-player abstract strategy board game. Each player controls sixteen pieces of six types on a chessboard. Each type of piece moves in a distinct way. The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent's king; checkmate occurs when a king is threatened with capture and has no escape. A game can end in various ways besides checkmate: a player can resign, and there are several ways a game can end in a draw.
A chess problem, also called a chess composition, is a puzzle set by the composer using chess pieces on a chess board, which presents the solver with a particular task. For instance, a position may be given with the instruction that White is to move first, and checkmate Black in two moves against any possible defence. A chess problem fundamentally differs from over-the-board play in that the latter involves a struggle between Black and White, whereas the former involves a competition between the composer and the solver. Most positions which occur in a chess problem are 'unrealistic' in the sense that they are very unlikely to occur in over-the-board play. There is a good deal of specialized jargon used in connection with chess problems.
This glossary of chess explains commonly used terms in chess, in alphabetical order. Some of these terms have their own pages, like fork and pin. For a list of unorthodox chess pieces, see Fairy chess piece; for a list of terms specific to chess problems, see Glossary of chess problems; for a list of named opening lines, see List of chess openings; for a list of chess-related games, see List of chess variants; for a list of terms general to board games, see Glossary of board games.
This glossary of chess problems explains commonly used terms in chess problems, in alphabetical order. For a list of unorthodox pieces used in chess problems, see Fairy chess piece; for a list of terms used in chess is general, see Glossary of chess; for a list of chess-related games, see List of chess variants.
Peril at End House is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the US by the Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1932 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in March of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6).
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by the English author Charles Dickens, originally published in 1870.
A chess set consists of a chessboard and white and black chess pieces for playing chess. There are sixteen pieces of each color: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns. Extra pieces may be provided for use in promotion, most commonly one extra queen per color. Chess boxes, chess clocks, and chess tables are common pieces of chess equipment used alongside chess sets. Chess sets are made in a wide variety of styles, sometimes for ornamental rather than practical purposes. For tournament play, the Staunton chess set is preferred and, in some cases, required.
Fritz and Chesster is a series of educational programs about chess for children. In each of the four PC games, Fritz White and his cousin Bianca learn chess with the help of the anthropomorphic rat Chesster. In the first three games, they learn various elements of chess before competing against King Black in a chess game; the fourth game is set on an alien planet. The first game teaches the rules of the game, along with some basic checkmates and strategy. The next games teach opening theory, tactics, middlegame analysis and endgames, along with checkmate patterns. Other games feature chess variants, chess puzzles or timed games with highscore boards.
Alice Borchardt was an American writer of historical fiction, fantasy, and horror. She shared a childhood of storytelling in New Orleans with her sister, the novelist Anne Rice, who was two years younger. A nurse by profession, as a writer she nurtured a profound interest in little-known periods of history.
Gess is an abstract strategy board game for two players, involving a grid board and mutating pieces. The name was chosen as a conflation of "chess" and "Go". It is pronounced with a hard "g" as in "Go", and is thus homophonous with "guess".
Katherine Neville is a New York Times, USA Today and #1 internationally bestselling American author who writes adventure/quest novels. Her novels include The Eight (1988), A Calculated Risk (1992), The Magic Circle (1998) and The Fire (2008), which is a sequel to The Eight.
Chess became a source of inspiration in the arts in literature soon after the spread of the game to the Arab World and Europe in the Middle Ages. The earliest works of art centered on the game are miniatures in medieval manuscripts, as well as poems, which were often created with the purpose of describing the rules. After chess gained popularity in the 15th and 16th centuries, many works of art related to the game were created. One of the best-known, Marco Girolamo Vida's poem Scacchia ludus, written in 1527, made such an impression on the readers that it singlehandedly inspired other authors to create poems about chess.
Minichess is a family of chess variants played with regular chess pieces and standard rules, but on a smaller board. The motivation for these variants is to make the game simpler and shorter than standard chess. The first chess-like game implemented on a computer was the 6×6 chess variant Los Alamos chess. The low memory capacity of early computers meant that a reduced board size and a smaller number of pieces were required for the game to be implementable on a computer.
De ludo scachorum, also known as Schifanoia, is a Latin-language manuscript on the game of chess written around 1500 by Luca Pacioli, a leading mathematician of the Renaissance. Created in the times when rules of the game were evolving to the ones known today, the manuscript contains over a hundred chess problems, to be solved – depending on the problem – using either the old or the modern rules.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to chess:
The Fire, published in 2008, is a novel by American author Katherine Neville. It is an adventure/quest novel which is a sequel to her debut novel The Eight. The main character, Alexandra Solarin, must enter into a cryptic world of danger and conspiracy in order to recover the pieces of the Montglane Service, a legendary chess set once owned by Charlemagne. The novel contains several repeated elements from The Eight and was a New York Times Bestseller for six months.
Quatrochess is a chess variant for four players invented by George R. Dekle Sr. in 1986. It is played on a square 14×14 board that excludes the four central squares. Each player controls a standard set of sixteen chess pieces, and additionally nine fairy pieces. The game can be played in partnership or all-versus-all.
