CheckMatle – the World Championship game

You all know Wordle, the New York Times game that has gained massive world-wide popularity. It is a viral web-based word game created by Josh Wardle in 2021, one that grew from 90 players at its launch to millions of daily players today. The game’s simple mechanics — guessing a five-letter word within six attempts — contributed to its success, and led to many clones, games that use a similar strategy in other areas of play.

Meet CheckMatle, a little chess game inspired by Wordle. It was developed by chess problem expert Anirudh Daga, all of 16 years old, and Martin Friedel, son of ChessBase co-founder Frederic Friedel. From the start of the World Championship on Monday, November 25, Anirudh, who lives in Singapore, is running the site and will post daily puzzles for you to solve. 

So how does CheckMatle work? You are presented with a position, from a famous game or a chess problem, in which one side is mated – but with two or three pieces missing. You are asked to reconstruct the mate by adding the correct pieces.

In the CheckMatle puzzle you are required to drag pieces from the bottom, place them on the board and click Enter. If the piece type is not at all involved, it’s background turns grey. If it is part of the solution but is on the wrong square, it turns yellow. And if it is a correct piece and on the correct square, it turns green (and stays on the board). Green arrows show you the escape squares the king has – they are not displayed in “Hard” mode.

On the right you get a list of your tries. When you have solved the puzzle, there is a button that lets you replay the game or problem in which the mate occurred. The above (incomplete) position is taken from a 1983 game between Vodiska and Fejes.

Like to try it out? On this demo page there are eight CheckMatle puzzles which you can use to test your skills. Here are the positions from the demo:

The Demo Page, which does not reflect the latest version of CheckMatle, gives you an opportunity to try out the game and see if it is to your liking. If it is, then stand by for a daily CheckMatle puzzle from Monday November 25, the day the World Championship starts in Singapore. On the days of the games the puzzles will auspiciously have mating positions in which a World Champion was involved.

And here’s the CheckMatle page, which will activate on Monday.