Nobody is taught to win here. A child who knows how the pieces move can sit down with anyone and play; a child who has been taught an opening cannot do anything else.
The three games
They are in the order a child actually learns chess in, and none of them needs an opponent, a clock or a whole game.
- How the pieces move — one piece on an empty board, and every square it can reach
- Can you take it? — one of ours, three of theirs, and exactly one capture
- Is the king in check? — the first rule that involves two pieces at once
Three levels
The levels add pieces rather than replacing them. The rook and the bishop come first, because their moves are lines a child can see along. The queen and the pawn come second: the pawn is not first, despite being the smallest, because it is the piece with the most exceptions — it moves one way and takes another. The knight is last, because it is the only piece whose move has to be learned rather than looked at.
A real board
Eight by eight, a1 dark, the files lettered along the bottom and the ranks numbered up the side. A simplified board teaches a child to read a board that does not exist, and the point of these games is that a real set stops being confusing.
Every position is dealt fresh and then checked against the rules, so the same puzzle does not come round twice and the answer is never a memory.
What is not here
No castling, no en passant, no promotion, and no playing against a computer. Those are not what a seven-year-old is stuck on. What they are stuck on is that a knight does not move in a line and a bishop never changes the colour of its square.