Blindfold Chess Puzzles

June 7, 2022 7:16 AM

Blindfold Chess Puzzles uses the Lichess puzzle database to provide free, unlimited chess puzzles that you have to workout without a board.
posted by interogative mood (10 comments total)

It gave me: Black played Qxf8. With the following pieces on the board:
Kg2, Re5, White pawns on f4 g3.
The black pieces being: kg4, qf8.

In the box marked “White's next move” I wrote Rg5.
It marked the solution as incorrect and said the correct solution was Rg5#

Le sigh.
posted by techSupp0rt at 8:19 AM on June 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

Similar result here. For my position I entered hg, then tried the same move as h7xg7. Both wrong. The correct answer was hxg7.
Still, looks like fun.
posted by MtDewd at 11:44 AM on June 7, 2022

Next puzzle- R-h5+ and R-h5 - both wrong. Correct is Rh5+.
I'll probably figure out how to handle this.
posted by MtDewd at 11:51 AM on June 7, 2022

I assume you have to enter your move in PGN. The page says it's version 0.1 so hopefully this will be improved (there are plenty of libraries that can sanitize chess notation). The About page asks for ideas and has a contact email.
posted by dfan at 1:28 PM on June 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Nitpick: Perhaps you mean Algebraic Notation (AN)? PGN (Portable Game Notation) is for entire games (it is right there in the name :), or set of games, and the moves within the game are described using AN.

Thanks for pointing out the contact link, I missed it earlier when I tried out the site on my phone.
posted by techSupp0rt at 2:37 PM on June 7, 2022

I am just plain awful at visualization. I worked through a couple before deciding that blindfolded chess is something akin to psyching myself up to go to the gym. Good interface but I do see how getting the exact algebraic notation is annoying
posted by Room 101 at 4:29 PM on June 7, 2022

Once I got past the notation annoyances l I’ve had some good improvements to my visualization by doing about two puzzles a day. I started by lowering the number of pieces and the difficulty.
posted by interogative mood at 9:56 PM on June 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

I did mean PGN, but that's because the PGN standard uses a particular exact form of algebraic notation; the term "algebraic notation" on its own happily includes things like "Rg5" (without the checkmate mark) and "hg". What I should have written was SAN, but I thought that PGN's definition for moves differed slightly from it (it doesn't). I am pretty confident that PGN/SAN is what the page is looking for because that's what lichess would be exporting.
posted by dfan at 10:27 AM on June 8, 2022

I think if you check the FIDE and US chess rule books on the particulars of scoring you will find that Rg5 and Rg5+ are not the same and when the king is in check you are supposed to denote it on the scoresheet. Although some federations have variance like using a “:” instead of “x” to denote a capture in international or rated competition the notation is standardized. You won’t face any real penalties for errors like that but expect your coach to yell at you. Also god forbid an arbiter needs to look at your score sheet because of some dispute.

For the blindfold chess app this precision of adding the check let’s the computer know that you’ve properly visualized the board.
posted by interogative mood at 7:58 PM on June 8, 2022

FIDE Laws of Chess, Section C.13: "It is not mandatory to record the check, the checkmate and capturing [symbols] on the scoresheet."

No FIDE arbiter or USCF tournament director is going to care if you left off a + or #, used : instead of x, wrote hg instead of hxg7, left off e.p., or inserted a = before the piece a pawn is promoting to. You record the game so you can prove what happened during it, not because you're going to feed it into some computer program that only accepts strict SAN (like this webpage).

Anyway, I was only trying to point people to a reference for the format required for move entry so that they could avoid frustration. I apologize if I confused anyone or contributed to a derail.
posted by dfan at 1:11 PM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]