Testing CheckMatle – with Svitlana

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.

CheckMatle is a 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. Anirudh, who lives in Singapore, is running the site and posts daily puzzles for people 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. If the piece type you drag onto the board 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.

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.

Everybody who follows ChessBase, knows who Svitlana Demchenko is. She is a Ukrainian-born Canadian chess player, just out of her teens, an accomplished Woman International Master, winner of the 2023 Canadian Women's Closed Championship. She is an active chess streamer on Twitch under the name SvetaStream. Currently 21 years old, she is studying translational and molecular medicine at the University of Ottawa.

Sveta has participated in countless "Smart Moves" shows on our news page, and been in Hamburg a number of times to record Fritztrainers and chess courses: 

Sveta had not seen CheckMatle, and we conducted the following experiment on her: in a Zoom call we gave her the link to the CheckMatle page – and watched how she would react to it. No instructions – she had to work things out for herself. We asked her to share her screen and recorded her reactions. Here is how things progressed:

Like to try it out yourself? The CheckMatle page provides a new puzzle every day. The mating positions you must reconstruct are mostly from famous, historical games, which you can replay once you have solved the puzzle. The site is in development and will be enhanced and extended in the near future.