About Chess

Chess is a learn-to-play chess ladder for children aged 4 to 7 — asked for, right down to the squished pieces, by a five-year-old. It does not drop a child into a whole game of chess. It starts with one piece on a small board and one gold star to reach, and climbs, a rung at a time, until they are finding checkmate in one.

Everything a child does here is real chess. The rook really does move in straight lines, the knight really does jump its L, a pawn really does turn into a queen when it reaches the far end. Your child picks a piece up and drags it, and the moment they do, every square it is allowed to go to lights up with a dot — so the rules are learned by seeing them, not by being told them.

The ladder

• Meet the pieces. A small five-square board, one piece, one star. Move the rook. Move the bishop. Make the knight jump. Nothing else happens on this rung — it is only about how each piece travels, because that is the thing everything else in chess is built on.
• The pawn. The pawn gets a rung to itself, because it is the one every child trips over: it moves straight forwards, but it takes diagonally, forward-left and forward-right. So we stand a black piece right in front of it — which it may not touch, however much it wants to — and one on the diagonal, which it can.
• Squish it. Now the other pieces take something — land on a black piece and it gets squished right off the board.
• Journeys. Two and three moves to reach the star now, with your own pieces in the way, because you may never land on a friend.
• To the end! March a pawn all the way up the board and it is crowned as a queen. Then the pawn races: yours going one way, black’s coming the other, and only one of you can get there first.
• Careful! Two pieces you could take, but one of them is guarded — take that one and it gets squished straight back. Learning to look before you leap is the moment a child starts really playing.
• Checkmate. Put the king in check, and finally find the one move that ends the game.

How it works

• Drag the piece where you want it. Pick it up and the legal squares light up with dots; drop it on one. Tapping the piece and then tapping a dot works just as well, for children who would rather tap. Only legal moves ever show a dot, so an illegal move cannot happen by accident.
• Wrong turning? Nothing is lost — the piece just carries on from where it is, or hops back and lets them try again. No timers, no losing, no telling off.
• Every puzzle is freshly generated, so the practice never runs out.
• Solve one and win a star. New rungs of the ladder unlock as the stars add up, so the puzzles get harder exactly as fast as your child does.
• The board itself grows with them — five squares across at the start, a full chessboard by the top.

How to play with your child

• Use the real names. Rook, knight, bishop, pawn. A child who has met the words here is ready for a real board.
• Say the rule out loud as they move. “Straight lines for the rook. Diagonals for the bishop.” The dots show it; your voice makes it stick.
• Ask before they tap. “Which one is guarded?” The pause is the chess.
• Castling and en passant are not in here — they come later, on a real board, once the pieces themselves are second nature.

More from Tadpole Games

• Build a Building — right tool, right material, and a new building goes up.
• Sumdle — make the target number, win a star.
• Tick or Fix — a daily phonics word puzzle for children aged 4 to 7.