Daily Brains · one checkmate problem a day in Timur's Great Chess.
Timurs Checkmate is the mate-in-N daily of Daily Brains (/daily), played with the pieces of Timur's Great Chess: the 14th-century Persian game with camels, giraffes, elephants, war engines, pickets, a vizier and a general beside the king, on an 11×10 board with two citadels. Every day the whole world gets the same position: White to play and force checkmate in two moves on weekdays, in three at weekends. Black defends by itself, always with the reply that holds out longest. Exactly one first move works, and the game's own full-width solver has proved it.
STORY & LORE
Timur's Great Chess
Great Chess (shatranj al-kabir), usually called Tamerlane chess, is named after the Central Asian conqueror Timur (Tamerlane, 1336–1405), who is said to have preferred it to ordinary shatranj. It is known from Persian manuscripts, and our reading follows H.J.R. Murray's account in A History of Chess (1913), as most modern write-ups do. The full game has 28 pieces a side on an 11×10 board plus two citadel squares that jut out of the sides, and its pawns each belong to a piece and promote to it.
Sources vary
The manuscripts are brief and the reconstructions disagree on details: some give the giraffe a straight run of at least four squares rather than three; some place the citadels on the opposite sides; some let the picket stop one square away; promotion of the pawn of pawns and the pawn of kings, the prince and the adventitious kings, and the king's once-a-game swap are all described differently. Timurs Checkmate picks one consistent reading (below) and states it in the rules deck, the piece guide and this wiki. If you know the game from another source, expect the giraffe and the citadels to be the places where it differs.
Where the problems come from
Every problem is generated from its puzzle number with the same seeded random-number recipe as the rest of Daily Brains, so everyone gets the same board. The generator sets up a plausible middlegame round the black king (a pawn shelter, black pieces in Black's half, white attackers near the king, pawns and a back piece for the look of a game) and keeps a candidate only if the solver proves: nobody starts in check; there is no quicker mate; there is a forced mate in exactly N against every defence; exactly one first move forces it; the key is never a capture; on Thursday and Friday the key is quiet (no check either); and Black has a real choice after the key. A weekend mate in three can take thousands of candidates, so the first 800 days are pre-generated into puzzles.js by the same code; later days are generated live in the browser.
The look
The pieces are drawn by hand for this game in a Staunton-meets-Persian-miniature style: every piece stands on the same turned plinth with a gilt band; the court figures are turned columns crowned with Persian headgear (an onion dome for the king, a spiked helmet for the general, a plumed turban for the vizier), the rook keeps the old split-topped rukh, and the camel, giraffe, elephant (with its howdah cloth) and the war engine (a trebuchet on wheels) stand in silhouette like figures in a miniature. Ivory for White, umber for Black, on sage and cream squares like the classical problem diagrams, in a dark green frame with a gilt rule.
HOW IT PLAYS
Moving
Tap a white piece, then one of its dots (rings mark captures), or drag it. On a keyboard the arrow keys move a cursor, Enter or Space picks up and drops, I shows the piece under the cursor, Esc cancels.
Hold to learn
Hold any piece (either colour) on a phone, or hover it with a mouse, and every square it reaches lights up on the real board, with its name and move in the bar under the board. The Pieces button opens a guide with a movement diagram for all eleven pieces.
Strikes and Undo
Only the key starts the solution; after that, any move that still forces mate in the moves left is accepted. A move that doesn't is a strike: it stays on the board, Black shows the reply that escapes (or the board says stalemate), and Undo takes both back. Three strikes end the day and the forced mate is played out.
Scoring and sharing
A solve scores 1000 points minus 250 per strike (1000, 750 or 500). There is no clock. The share line names the day, the board and the result and lists your moves as + (good) and x (strike), with no spoilers and no emoji.
Citadels (simplified)
White's citadel is the bastion beside a2, Black's beside k9. Only a king may enter one, and only the opponent's; a king that gets in draws the game, and nothing can attack it there. In a puzzle that counts as an escape, so the solver treats a citadel move as a refutation. In practice no generated problem lets a king near an enemy citadel. On narrow phones the citadels shrink to slim bastions so the board itself keeps squares of 32px or more.
Pawns, stalemate and bare kings (simplified)
Pawns move one square forward and take diagonally forward, with no double step. Historically each pawn promotes to the piece it belongs to; problems never get that far, so here a pawn on the last rank becomes a General (the old shatranj rule) and the generator keeps pawns off the end ranks. Problems end in checkmate only: stalemate and baring the king, which were wins in shatranj, don't count as mate.
THE PIECES
Movement diagrams drawn by the game itself (great-chess-art.js). Dots: moves and captures; rings: pawn captures only; dashed lines: the giraffe's dog-leg routes.
Royal
Court
Court
Rider
Leaper
Rider
Rider
Leaper
Leaper
Leaper
PawnGALLERY
THE WEEK
| Day | Board | Problem | Key |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Small Court (8×8, no citadels) | Mate in 2 | Any non-capture |
| Tuesday | Great Board (11×10 + citadels) | Mate in 2 | Any non-capture |
| Wednesday | Great Board | Mate in 2 | Any non-capture; Black has 6+ replies |
| Thursday | Great Board | Mate in 2 | Quiet: no check, no capture |
| Friday | Great Board | Mate in 2 | Quiet; Black has 8+ replies |
| Saturday | Great Board | Mate in 3 | Any non-capture |
| Sunday | Great Board | Mate in 3 | Any non-capture; Black has 4+ replies |
OUR RULESET AT A GLANCE
One consistent reading of Murray (1913). Letters are the ones used in the game's notation.
| Letter | Piece | Move |
|---|---|---|
| K | King | One step in any direction. No castling; the historical once-a-game swap is left out. |
| G | General | One step diagonally (the old shatranj queen). |
| V | Vizier | One step straight: up, down, left or right. |
| R | Rook | Any distance straight, blocked by pieces (the modern rook). |
| N | Knight | The (1,2) leap, over anything in between. |
| T | Picket | Diagonally like a bishop, but at least two squares: it can never stop on, or take on, the first diagonal square. |
| Z | Giraffe | One step diagonally, then onward in a straight line, outward, for three squares or more. It slides: every square it passes, the diagonal one included, must be empty. |
| E | Elephant | Leaps exactly two squares diagonally. |
| C | Camel | The (1,3) leap: one square one way, three the other. |
| D | War Engine | Leaps exactly two squares straight. |
| P | Pawn | One step forward, takes one step diagonally forward, no double step. Becomes a General on the last rank (puzzle simplification). |
VERSION HISTORY
- First version: one Great Chess mate problem a day (mate in 2 Mon–Fri, mate in 3 Sat–Sun), Monday small court, quiet keys Thursday and Friday.
- Rules engine, full-width mate solver and the hand-drawn piece set shared with Mini Great Chess (public/gamedata/_shared/great-chess.js, great-chess-art.js).
- Seeded generator with an 800-day pre-generated bank; scripts/test-timurs-checkmate.mjs re-proves every banked day (unique key, no shorter mate, weekday ramp, main line ends in mate) and scripts/test-great-chess.mjs checks move generation for every piece.
- Hold/hover movement preview, piece guide, strikes with Undo after a wrong move (Black shows its escape), no-clock scoring, spoiler-free share text, streaks, achievements, cloud save.
- Tested at 390×844, 360×740 (32px squares) and desktop.