What is Chess Solitaire?
Chess Solitaire is a single player puzzle played with ordinary chess pieces on a small board. There is no opponent and no checkmate. Every piece on the board is yours, every move must be a capture, and the goal is to keep capturing until only one piece remains.
You only need to know how the pieces move. Openings, tactics and ratings are beside the point, which makes the game a favourite with two crowds at once: chess players who want a quick logic fix, and puzzle fans who never play chess but know a knight when they see one.
How to play Chess Solitaire
Every move must capture another piece. The capturing piece moves exactly as it would in chess and lands on the square of the piece it takes, leaving the board one piece lighter. When a single piece is left standing, the board is solved.
Movement follows chess. Queens, rooks and bishops slide in straight lines and need a clear path. Knights jump. Pawns capture one square diagonally upward on the board as you see it. Pieces never move without capturing, so a pawn with no diagonal target is simply stuck.
The king carries one special rule: it can capture, but it can never be captured. If a board contains a king, the king must therefore be the last piece standing, and every other piece has to be taken along the way.
Tips for harder boards
Count before you move. A board with eight pieces needs exactly seven captures, and every piece except the survivor gets taken exactly once. That turns the puzzle into a sequencing question. The issue is rarely whether a capture is legal right now, it is whether the piece you are about to remove still has work to do.
Decide who survives first. If there is a king, that decision is made for you, and you can plan the whole board backwards from the king's final capture. If not, look for the piece that can plausibly deliver the last capture, often a queen or a knight near the centre of the action.
Watch the limited pieces. Pawns only capture diagonally upward, so a pawn that drifts too high or gets left alone can strand the whole line. Deal with the awkward pieces early, while there are still neighbours around to serve as their targets.
Wrong turns cost nothing. Undo and reset are free, and on hard and expert boards a couple of resets to map the dead ends is a normal part of solving.
The daily puzzle
A fresh board arrives every day at midnight UTC in easy, medium and hard, with an expert board as an optional bonus. Everyone plays the same boards on the same date, in the browser, no download needed.
Boards are generated solution first. The generator builds each position backwards from the final surviving piece, so a winning sequence always exists, and the checker accepts any legal sequence that ends with one survivor, not just the line the generator had in mind.
The tiers are tuned differently on purpose. Easy contains no king and forgives most orderings. The king starts appearing at medium, the boards grow and the capture chains lengthen through hard, and expert always ends with the king delivering the final capture. Completing the three core boards keeps your streak, and the expert board upgrades a finished day to a clean sweep.
Chess Solitaire FAQ
Do I need to be good at chess?
No. You need to know how each piece moves and nothing else. There is no opponent, no check and no checkmate, and strong chess players have no particular edge beyond familiarity with the moves.
Can a board be impossible?
No. Every board is built backwards from its solved position, so at least one winning capture sequence always exists. If you are stuck, the position is telling you the order was wrong, not that the board is broken.
Is there more than one winning order?
Often, yes. Two captures that do not interact can usually be played either way round. The game accepts any legal sequence that ends with one piece standing, so you never need to find the exact line the generator used.
Why can I not capture the king?
The king's immunity is what shapes the endgame. Because it can never be taken, any board that includes a king must end with the king alone, which turns the last few captures into a small engineered finale.
What happens if I get stuck?
Undo and reset are free and unlimited, and nothing counts against you until the board is solved. Experimenting is part of the game.