232: Chess Enlightenment

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Chess Enlightenment
You know that 'sweep the pieces off the board and see it in your mind' thing? Doesn't work.
Title text: You know that 'sweep the pieces off the board and see it in your mind' thing? Doesn't work.

Explanation

Chess is a board game in which two players take turns to move a variety of different units to try and capture the other player's "king." Chess has a lively tournament scene, and takes much practice to attain a competent level of skill in the game. Different units can move and capture in different ways; pawns can only move forward by one square unless it's their first move, in which case they can move up two squares, but they can only capture by moving diagonally unless they perform an en passant in which they move around an opposing pawn that had moved forward two squares on the previous turn.

Other pieces have similar rules. Obi-Wan Kenobi is a character from the movie series Star Wars who played the mentor figure to the protagonist, Luke Skywalker. One of his pieces of advice to his mentee was to relax and listen to his subconscious in strenuous times.

Cueball finds his game of chess against Megan to be too difficult, and attempts to tap his subconscious to find his next move. The rules of chess are not ingrained into his subconscious however, and so his subconscious ends up feeding him invalid moves and beginner questions concerning movement rules.

The title text refers to a scene in the chess movie Searching for Bobby Fischer, in which Sir Ben Kingsley's character dramatically sweeps the pieces off the board and instructs his student to see the pieces in his mind, which the child proceeds to do. According to the title text, is not actually possible to do that on real life.

Transcript

Cueball: Why is chess so hard? Maybe the answers lie within me. Maybe I just need to let go, relax, and let my instincts and subconscious speak.
Meditate
Cueball's subconscious: Knight to G-4
Cueball: That's not even a legal move.
Cueball's subconscious: Okay, hold on. How do the pawns capture, again?
Cueball: Man, Obi-Wan was full of crap.


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Discussion

I actually think that the title-text is a reference to the movie "Searching for Bobby Ficher, where Ficher's coach teaches him to play chess by sweeping all the pieces onto the floor. 174.31.180.218 20:43, 21 August 2013 (UTC)PassiveDemoralizer

Why does the explanation even have a portion of a summary of the rules of chess? It's not really important to the understanding of the comic, and I don't see any other reason for its inclusion. ISaveXKCDpapers (talk) 23:03, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Because the voice in Cueball's head specifically asks how the Pawns move. Argis13 (talk) 14:25, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

The reason why you can't have "chess enlightenment" is that chess is a non- insight problem in the first place. Granted, a seasoned player will have insights, but even so, you must always check your ideas with a lot of hard calculation. That being said, almost all masters are good at calculating fairly long sequences in their head (although they don't really sweep the pieces off the board - dramatic as it is, it would be illegal). Many find it even easier this way, because in the long run it is inconvenient to keep your eyes rolling over the board.