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The Climb: from the kitchen table to the tournament hall.
Puzzles now come with somewhere to go. Five places to play, eight pawns on each board, and every square a little harder than the last. Solve five to push a pawn; get one across and the next place opens.
The short version
- Five places to play: kitchen table, park, café, club and tournament hall
- Eight pawns on each board, one for each kind of puzzle: checkmates, forks, pins, endgames and more
- Solve five puzzles to push a pawn one square; each square is a little harder than the last
- Get a pawn across, pick its piece, and the next place opens
- It's where Puzzles starts now: tap Try a puzzle and you're on your next square
- Squares you clear count toward this week's Climb squares in the standings
- Free, with no account needed; sign in and your Climb follows you to any device
Every chess player’s story starts somewhere modest. A kitchen table, a board with a missing knight replaced by a salt shaker, someone who knew how the horse moves. The Climb starts you there too, and walks you all the way to the tournament hall, one puzzle at a time.
Eight pawns, eight kinds of puzzle
Each place has a board, and each board has eight pawns, one for each kind of puzzle: checkmates on the e-file (where we’d suggest you start), forks, pins and skewers, discoveries, sacrifices, loose pieces, quiet moves and endgames. Pick a pawn, solve five of its puzzles, and it steps up a square. The next square’s puzzles are a touch harder. Push any pawn you like, in any order: it’s your board.
A miss doesn’t cost you anything. The next puzzle comes, and the one that got away waits in “a few to look at again”. Five clean in a row, no hints, and the square fills in canary, with a little extra XP for the trouble. And yes, a pawn on its first square can go two at once. It’s only fair.
Across the board
Get a pawn to the far side and it becomes whatever you choose: queen, rook, bishop or knight. Your first one on a board opens the next place along the road: the park, then the café, the club and finally the tournament hall, where the puzzles stop being polite. Already sharp? Once your puzzle rating settles high enough, the places that match it open on their own, so nobody has to grind the kitchen table twice.
Where Puzzles starts
The Climb is the front door now: Puzzles opens on your next square, so a first visit is the kitchen table’s e3 and a checkmate, no menus. Practice, Today’s puzzle and Scramble are one tap along the bar. Signed in, every square you clear this week counts toward the Climb squares in the standings.
Yours, wherever you play
It’s free and needs no account: signed out, your Climb lives in this browser. Sign in and it’s saved to your account, and the squares you climbed before come with you. Your Climb pieces live on the Climb’s map; your Club card still moves only with games at the club. The kitchen table’s set up.