Stop guessing what to study next.
One trail, 34 stones, from how the pieces move to queen versus rook. Every stone is lessons, a puzzle drill and a test you have to pass — against real puzzles for tactics, against Stockfish for endgames — so each thing you learn builds on something you proved.
Foundations
Passed
Tactics I
Due for review
- Up next
Pawn & basic endgames
Your current stone
Tactics II
Unlocks when you pass the stone before it
Rook endgames
Unlocks when you pass the stone before it
Minor pieces & advanced
Unlocks when you pass the stone before it
Free through stone 8 · 34 stones in all
How the path works
Answer one question
New to chess, know the rules, or played for years — one answer sets your first stone. Once you have 16 rated puzzle solves, your rating refines the spot.
Walk the stone
One to four lessons, then an 8-puzzle drill on the stone's topics, then a 5-puzzle test. Three clean solves pass it — no hint, no wrong move. Five out of five is three stars.
Earn stars, unlock the next
A pass opens the next stone and earns Pawns. Stones before your starting point stay open for stars, never required — the trail only ever moves forward.
Par (moves)
14
Three-star target
Within par + 4, no slips
Par is a Syzygy tablebase fact for this exact position
Endgames you play against Stockfish, scored against the tablebase
The 13 endgame stones don't quiz you — they make you play it out. Kings and a rook on the board, Stockfish on the other side, and you have to deliver the mate, promote the pawn or hold the draw inside a move budget. That budget isn't a guess: every par comes from the Syzygy tablebase for that exact position — distance to mate for a mate, moves to promotion for a pawn ending, a survival budget for a hold — machine-checked before it was written into the trail. Three stars means you converted it about as cleanly as the tablebase would. Slip into a lost or drawn position and the play-out stops and offers a retry from the slip.
Mate or promote: three stars within par + 4 moves with no slips, two within par + 10. A hold is scored on slips alone — three stars for none, two for one.
That hangs the rook — the bishop on f6 takes it for free.
After the test: 2 misses to review before you leave
A wrong move gets a why
Play a wrong move anywhere along the trail and Knighty doesn't buzz — he tells you what it costs, from engine facts only: a forced mate in N, a piece lost, an advantage that slips, or "honestly playable, just not the lesson's move". After a test, every miss gets its own "why did I miss this?" review before you leave the results screen, while the position is still fresh. This is authored text plus engine facts filled into four fixed verdicts — not a chat. The conversational coach is a different thing, and it lives on the analysis board.
Where should your path start?
- I'm new to chess
- I know the rules and some tactics
- I've played for years
Refined by your puzzle rating after 16 rated solves
Review ring — this topic has faded
60-day half-life. Never re-locks.
Skip what you know. Come back to what faded.
One placement question sets your first stone; with 16 or more rated puzzle solves, your rating refines it. Stones before your start stay open for stars, never required. And because the path reads your puzzle results over time, a passed stone's topic fades on a 60-day half-life — drop below the threshold and the stone shows a review ring. It never re-locks. It just tells you the honest state of what you learned in March by the time June comes round, instead of assuming it's still there. Understanding you can demonstrate, not a completion checkmark.
Fail the first test twice and Knighty offers the previous block — an offer, never an automatic step back. Nothing moves you without asking.
The trail in numbers
34 stones in 6 blocks
Foundations, Tactics I, pawn and basic endgames, Tactics II, rook endgames, minor pieces and advanced. Difficulty bands rise from 0–1100 on stone 1 to 1400–2400 at the end.
58 lessons on the trail
One to four per stone, from how the pieces move to queen versus rook — then the drill, then the test.
21 puzzle tests, 13 play-outs
Tactics stones test against real puzzles; endgame stones against Stockfish, scored by the tablebase.
Drills that never come up empty
Every stone's band holds at least 40 real puzzles across its topics, and every topic at least 15 — re-derived from the corpus by the test suite.
Side trips, never gates
The 110 opening lessons branch off after stone 5, and learn-from-mistakes after stone 14. Both sit beside the path; neither is required.
Pawns for every stone
10 Pawns per stone passed and 5 per star. Five stones open with a 30-second coordinate warm-up. Web and mobile alike.
Twenty minutes, one right answer.
Sign in, answer one question, and the trail carries the rest. Free through stone 8 — and Stockfish play-outs are free on every plan.
Start your path