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brightline

a little chess, a bright idea

Ten daily tactics

Mission

How to play

Tap one of your pieces, then a dotted destination. You play the side named below the board; the defender replies automatically. These are short tactical positions, not full matches. Standard chess rules apply, including check, castling, en passant and choosing a promotion.

The move limit counts your moves only. A ◆ and dashed border mark the specific capture target. Each mission is forced against every legal defence: “Capture” means take that piece. It does not promise a material gain: the defender might recapture after the mission ends.

Every move that still forces the mission is accepted; a legal move that throws it away stays unplayed. Undo takes back a whole player/defender turn, as often as you like. Reset restarts this puzzle. Hints reveal an idea, then a piece, then a move.

Keyboard: Tab to the board, arrow keys to explore, Enter or Space to select and move, Escape to deselect. U undoes and R resets when the board has focus. Progress saves on this device when storage is available, and everything plays offline. Each UTC day selects ten positions from three curated editions (30 puzzles total); editions repeat every three days. A new day starts fresh when you open or reload the page.

Credits & licenses

Positions come from the Lichess open database puzzle export, dedicated under CC0 1.0 Universal (legal text). Individual authors are not supplied and no endorsement is implied. Each puzzle applies the source’s setup move; missions, hints, titles and explanations are written for Brightline. The source identifiers and game links for all three daily editions are listed below. Capture missions deliberately promise taking the marked piece, even if it can then be recaptured.

Rules use chess.js 0.10.3 by Jeff Hlywa, under the BSD 2-Clause license. The bundled copy exposes legal-move hooks so the page can verify positions locally; no remote engine or network request is used.

Chess.js copyright & full license
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A small daily pause. One good move at a time.

Promote your pawn to…