[HN Gopher] Show HN: OffChess - Offline chess puzzles app
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Show HN: OffChess - Offline chess puzzles app
Hi HN! I'm the developer of rdx, a mildly popular ad-free, privacy
and user friendly Reddit client. This time, I made something for a
very specific use case: solving chess puzzles with no internet.
Why? Well, my Wi-Fi is terrible in the bathroom--and that's where I
do some of my best thinking. I tried printing out "mate in X"
puzzles to solve offline, but they weren't fun without interaction.
So I built OffChess. OffChess is an iPhone/Android app that
contains over 100,000 chess puzzles, fully offline and completely
ad-free. You can solve puzzles by category (Mate in 1/2/3/4/5,
tactics like pins/forks/skewers, or openings like Sicilian/French,
etc). You gain or lose points based on how you perform, so there's
a light rating system to keep things engaging. No accounts, no
tracking, no monthly subscriptions, no internet required. Just
pure, old-school tactical chess training, wherever you are. You
can check out the iPhone/iPad app at
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chess-puzzles-offchess/id67447... or
the Android app at
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.offchess Would
love feedback, bug reports, or suggestions. Thanks!
Author : avadhesh18
Score : 348 points
Date : 2025-07-08 08:57 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (offchess.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (offchess.com)
| eajr wrote:
| Very cool app. Chess.com costs too much and lichess is rather
| ugly and has barebones puzzle support. I like how you can choose
| different categories. Will be using this from now on. Btw you
| have "Egnlish Opening" misspelled.
| poloniculmov wrote:
| Try lichess' beta app, it's much more user friendly, even if
| it's missing a couple of features.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Thanks for your generous reply and Oh my god how did I miss
| that, will fix in the next update.
| heap_perms wrote:
| For tactics I really like chesstempo.com. It has free,
| unlimited puzzles. It is to my mind superior for tactics
| training. It also has a comments feature which I really like.
| tajd wrote:
| This looks really cool! I can't remember what article I was
| reading the other day but it was advocating for local first
| software as being the true goal of creating user friendly
| software -> this app absolutely meet's that goal. Looking
| forwards to using it.
| lucb1e wrote:
| The article from the other day for context:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44473135
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Great read, thanks for sharing.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Awesome. I've never understood why Lichess limits the offline
| download to 50 puzzles.
| djexjms wrote:
| For what it's worth, the entire Lichess corpus of puzzles (over
| five million positions with solutions and theming tags) is
| available for download in CSV format at
| https://database.lichess.org/#puzzles
| chatmasta wrote:
| It's not worth much when I want to use the Lichess app on an
| eight hour plane ride to solve them :)
|
| I like the feature because it updates my rank when I get
| internet restored. I just wish they cached more than 50
| offline.
| zippyman55 wrote:
| I downloaded this and wrote a small program to filter on 1,
| 2, 3, 4, and 5 move puzzles. I also segregated by rating.
| Then I ran them thru stockfish (there are some errors) and
| generated several years worth of daily puzzles. It's part of
| a daily chess feed I have for my club. So, puzzles get harder
| thru the week, similar to NY times crossword puzzles. I
| uploaded this to my cheapo web server. I give credit to
| lichess and provide a link to play the position on the
| lichess.org website.
| khoury wrote:
| Very cool looking! Downloaded. What tech did you build it with?
| :)
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Swift, Java, Javascript, Sqlite etc.
| rprouse wrote:
| The app is full screen on my Samsung mobile so your bottom
| navigation is underneath the onscreen Android navigation and
| unusable. Happy to submit an issue and screenshots if you have a
| GitHub repo.
|
| Other than that, it is working nicely so far.
| stavros wrote:
| Same here, there's some text at the top that's below my clock
| and icons:
|
| https://imgz.org/ibGDKfuf/
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| That's not supposed to happen, there should be space left for
| a status bar and a navigation bar. Can you share the make and
| model of your device?
| stavros wrote:
| Yes, it's a Nothing 2.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Fixed, update should be available as soon as Google
| approves.
| stavros wrote:
| Thank you!
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Did you update? Should be fixed now.
| stavros wrote:
| There's no update for me yet :(
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Sometimes it takes a while for Google Pla to distribute
| the update in different parts of the world. Check Google
| Play in a few hours and it should be there. I have
| confirmed with multiple people and they say the issue has
| been fixed with the update. If you still have the issue
| you can always mail me.
| stavros wrote:
| I got the update and the issue is fixed, thanks! Still no
| border when capturing, though (I don't know if that's
| been implemented yet).
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| > Still no border when capturing
|
| For that you will have to wait for the next minor update.
| patriksvensson wrote:
| Reporting same bug, on Google Pixel 8.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| I'm really sorry about your experience. Could you please let me
| know your device name and screen size? I will make sure to fix
| this, along with any other bugs people report here and push an
| update to the app stores by tonight.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Update: I have fixed the issue, the update will be available
| as soon as Google approves it.
| mhitza wrote:
| I have TacticMaster (available on F-droid) but your app looks
| more polished and will have to give it a try as well.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Nice app and props to you for open sourcing it, thanks for your
| good words about OffChess.
| mhitza wrote:
| Not my app, just a user, credit goes to this person
| https://github.com/jazzm0
| freedomben wrote:
| Neat, just downloaded it off of fdroid. Really cool, thank you!
| stavros wrote:
| This is a nice app, but I have one bug report: When I tap on a
| piece, and it can capture another piece, it looks like it just
| can't move that way. Capturable pieces should have their
| background change somehow, to indicate that I can capture them.
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| That's more of a feature request not a bug report
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Yeah, that's more me being lazy than an actual bug. I left it
| like that assuming most people would figure it out anyway --
| but you're right, it's bad design. I'll add a border around the
| "capturable" pieces.
| stavros wrote:
| Thanks, it left me a bit baffled the first time, as it seemed
| to say I can't capture the piece, when I knew I could. I
| tried anyway, and it worked, but it was confusing.
| bambax wrote:
| Very nice! but why not a webapp as well (for those of us who
| seldom use their phone and can get bored at the office)?
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| OffChess website will be soon available in beta with multiple
| features.
| aoeusnth1 wrote:
| Probably because lichess.org exists?
| defrost wrote:
| Nice. Any retrograde chess puzzles with this?
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Not yet but interesting idea, I might add these as a category
| in the future.
| laurentlb wrote:
| Nice project!
|
| As it was not clear from the description, there's a one-time
| payment (4.29EUR) to get more than 7 puzzles in a day.
|
| Lichess also offers a good alternative to this, although their
| offline support is limited.
| scotty79 wrote:
| To be fair you shouldn't be sitting in the bathroom for that
| long because you'll develop hemorrhoids.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _To be fair you shouldn 't be sitting in the bathroom for
| that long because you'll develop hemorrhoids._
|
| Maybe he's really good at chess?
|
| (Unlike my former co-worker who would monopolize the one
| men's room stall for two hours at a stretch doing chess
| puzzles on his phone, and I'd have to go to the IT building.
| Gross.)
| eru wrote:
| Just use a standing potty?
| scotty79 wrote:
| I thought squatting was all the rage.
| jaredhallen wrote:
| TacticMaster on F Droid seems to have all the same features for
| free.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| A great app no doubt but the descriptive hints on OffChess
| and a different rating system set OffChess apart from
| TacticMaster.
| deepdarkforest wrote:
| CT-ART 4.0 is the gold standard. Again, not fully free, but it
| has some very instructional features, like playing against
| alternate moves, solving mini versions of a puzzle, playing the
| opposite side etc. Used it for years.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| > offline support is limited.
|
| You are limited to 50 puzzles when off the network, and when
| you reconnect, the next 50 (or the delta between how many you
| played and 50) are redownloaded.
| tangoalpha wrote:
| Nice app. Using moto edge 60 pro. The app navigation gets hidden
| under the phone navigation icons. I'd like to pay. Except without
| user login, I am unable to figure out if the purchase can be
| linkedin to my 2-3 devices (each of which may use a different
| Google account)
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Thanks! A couple of other people in this thread have mentioned
| that bug too and I'll get it fixed ASAP.
|
| There's no login required since the app uses Google Play
| Billing on Android and App Store billing on iOS. That also
| means purchases are tied to the Google account used to buy the
| app, so unfortunately they can't be shared across different
| accounts.
|
| I hate the annoyance of apps forcing you to create an account
| before you even try them and that's exactly why I kept it
| simple and login-free. But yeah, the trade-off is stuff like
| what you pointed out. To balance that, I made it a one-time
| low-cost purchase instead of a subscription. Hope that makes it
| fair.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > There's no login required since the app uses Google Play
| Billing
|
| ...so it requires logging in with a Google account. That
| means I won't be able to buy the app on my phone
|
| A one-time purchase for an offline privacy-friendly app is
| 100% fair and the price point and free tier seem great to me
| (someone upthread said it's like 4.7EUR if you want more than
| 7 puzzles per day iirc), but please just add an option to
| send you money directly via e.g. IBAN. It's one of the few
| privacy-friendly options and you also get to keep all of the
| money
|
| Most other options cut people out: paypal doesn't work half
| the time ("sorry, something went wrong" when the algorithm
| hates you today), stripe has issues when your bank and
| residence country don't match, credit card requires a good
| credit score, etc. It's all data- and algorithm-based,
| whereas banks are legally obliged to give you a functional
| account because it underpins so much of society nowadays. I'd
| be happy to pay for the app even without using it as a way to
| add my 'two cents' and hopefully make this more worth your
| time
| charcircuit wrote:
| A Google account is free and only takes a few seconds to
| make.
| mdaniel wrote:
| > one of the few privacy-friendly options
|
| almost certainly implies it's not a _technical_ hurdle
| that they 're facing. Plus, purchasing would require
| giving Google payment details, which would necessarily
| include billing address, and now it's tied to your phone.
| I could very easily imagine that giving a lot of folks a
| lot of heartburn
| lucb1e wrote:
| Huh? Try it, since like ten years it requires validating
| the account with a phone number, which in many countries
| requires going through government verification. That
| alone takes a while to set up if you want a new account
| that isn't linked to other things already. It's not a
| quick as generating a new password in your password
| manager and coming up with a non-taken username anymore
|
| You also can't log into this app specifically, it will
| tie _all apps on your device_ to this one account. Nobody
| should be doing this, it 's like logging into the Chrome
| browser and tying all pages that have any sort of google
| service on it (embedded map, youtube, analytics, ads) to
| the phone number and thus identity you signed up with
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| I will definitely look into supporting alternative payment
| methods, someone else also has a de-googled phone and asked
| for the same in this thread too. I wonder if any of the
| alternative payment methods has a sdk that I can integrate
| directly or I will have to go the old school way of using
| software keys.
| mdaniel wrote:
| > That also means purchases are tied to the Google account
| used to buy the app, so unfortunately they can't be shared
| across different accounts.
|
| I don't have hand-to-hand experience with Google Play, but
| quite a few of those billing platforms offer "discount
| codes." So to help the GP commenter, I would imagine they
| could email you from their purchasing Google account and ask
| for 100% off codes for their other Google account addresses
|
| I don't know how to help the sibling comment, short of you
| just straight-up making them a custom .apk without Play
| Billing. FWIW, it's actually absolutely painless to host your
| own f-droid repository
| <https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidserver#what-is-f-droid-
| serve...>. It's marked AGPL but despite its name one doesn't
| need to run that package to host a repo, just
| $($HOMEBREW_PREFIX/bin/fdroid update --verbose --create-
| metadata -W error) and then $(rsync -Pav --delete ./repo/
| your-awesome-host:/repo/)
|
| It's so painless you could even do that per user, as in
| lucb1e-fdroid.example.com or lucb1e-a6d7c104-e9b1-4ddc-
| ad5a-470e51bb5069.example.com
| shric wrote:
| I have an iPhone 16 Pro and there is an annoying delay between
| tapping a move and the piece moving
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Is it the animation of the piece moving? I've tested it on a
| bunch of iOS devices and haven't noticed anything odd, but I'd
| love to take a closer look. If you can, please share a video or
| GIF. It'll really help. You can email it to me at
| support@offchess.com. Thanks for trying my app out and giving
| feedback.
| shric wrote:
| Somehow today (I reached the limit yesterday) the delay has
| gone away, so I can't reproduce it.
|
| What happened, from memory:
|
| 1. Tap piece at original location
|
| 2. Tap piece at destination
|
| 3. Piece animation commences
|
| 4. Piece animation finishes
|
| 5. Move sound occurs
|
| Everything was smooth except there was an approximately half
| second delay (may have been less) between 2 and 3.
| endorphine wrote:
| Where did you get the puzzles from?
| McDev wrote:
| If it were my Chess app, I'd get them from the Lichess open
| database (currently at 5M puzzles):
| https://database.lichess.org/#puzzles
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| So did I.
| 44za12 wrote:
| Cool app. I've been thinking of building a similar PWA for a
| while now, might actually do that.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Even I thought of first making it a PWA too, the only problem
| is storage of the puzzles database.
| B56b wrote:
| Oh is there a reason you couldn't use IndexedDB to store the
| puzzles?
| dan_can_code wrote:
| great app, I like the adaptive style, but one piece of feedback
| is that, sometimes it is not clear what the goal is. For example,
| the language "Brilliant queen win ahead!" tells me, right, I am
| going to checkmate for the win with the queen in this game. But,
| actually the puzzle is to instead win the queen piece. "win" in
| chess to me always means checkmate.
|
| Overall great app.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| I will change the confusing wording like this but for now I can
| tell you this, if it mentions a piece by name then the puzzle
| is about winning that piece and not the game. Thank you for
| trying the app out.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Wait, are you saying that you have puzzles where the
| "winning" moves aren't the best moves? If so, that is not
| good.
| spagettnet wrote:
| Subtext is that the solution is always the best possible
| move sequence. OP's comment is clarifying that sometimes
| after executing the best move sequence, the puzzle ends
| with a capture, and sometimes ends with a checkmate
| ("winning").
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| No, the winning moves are always the best moves.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| The goal is always the best move. You shouldn't think of "what
| is my goal?", you should be finding the best move. This is
| something I struggled with as a beginner. There is always a
| best move, find it. Don't search for "the goal".
| modernerd wrote:
| Great start! Gentle feedback:
|
| - Text hints should probably be off by default, they give too
| much of a hint.
|
| - Auto-advance to next puzzle would be helpful, clicking "next
| puzzle" gets tiresome.
|
| - Typo in the puzzle categories list: "Egnlish Opening"
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| 1. I enabled them by default because I thought most people
| won't even know about their existence if they weren't there but
| if someone is bothered by them they will definitely find the
| menu item and disable it.
|
| 2. I will add an option to enable auto advance in future
| update.
|
| 3. That typo is embarrassing -- thanks for catching it! There's
| always something that slips through.
| mijoharas wrote:
| Nice app (bought the in app purchase).
|
| I went to find the setting (independently of this message,
| I'd prefer it off by default, but seems fine either way) and
| I actually can't open the menu, which I assume is the three
| dots I can see in the top of my phone. It appears to be
| behind my notification bar?
|
| The Offchess text in the top left is behind my phone's clock
| as well. Maybe just some padding is needed?
|
| Android 15, Nothing phone 2 if it matters. Message me if
| you'd like more details.
| mijoharas wrote:
| Nvm, probably the same as this I assume:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44500344
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| This happened because latest Android version explicitly
| needs to be told not to go edge-to-edge. It's been fixed,
| stalling in the Google Play App Review, might take a day or
| two but as soon as you update it will be fiex. Also, yes
| there is a menu item to turn hints off.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Fixed now, you can update from the store if you don't have
| auto updates on.
| mijoharas wrote:
| Can confirm the fix works. Thanks!
| mansoor_ wrote:
| Can you tell us about the tech stack you used and why?
| Daviey wrote:
| [flagged]
| wery wrote:
| I can't select the settings button on my Pixel 8 :|
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| I am so sorry about your experience, will be fixed by tomorrow
| if Google approves the update soon.
| iambateman wrote:
| This is cool! Is there a chess board library that you used or did
| you have to built it from scratch?
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| I built the board from scratch but used the awesome chess.js
| library by Jeff Hlywa for move validation.
| kij wrote:
| Nice, bought to replace 'chess tactics puzzles' the addition of
| rating changes sold me.
|
| Too late did I notice that there is no share fen button. I use
| that for harder puzzles when I want to understand why a given
| solution wouldn't work. Mostly just share to Chessis.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Share fen and share pgn buttons will be added in the next
| update.
| yunwal wrote:
| Love the app! Would love it twice as much if you allowed me to
| turn off the sounds (it turns off any existing podcasts or
| music).
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Thanks for the review, will add a toggle in the next update.
| notcrazylol wrote:
| Thank you and God bless you my friend :)
| tomhow wrote:
| [stub for offtopicness]
| endorphine wrote:
| In my experience, nothing beats the puzzle quality of
| ChessTempo. Curious how this compares to that.
| krishnasangeeth wrote:
| Hi ,Congrats on the launch.
|
| I built a free iOS app also which has chess puzzles.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/knighty-chess-puzzles/id674524...
|
| Would appreciate feedback.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Nice app, I dig the logo.
| krishnasangeeth wrote:
| Thanks man. I would also suggest creating a leaderboard
| with XP for gamification
| krishnasangeeth wrote:
| Hey , i would also suggest posting in r/chess
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Thanks man, I will definitely do that.
| atakan_gurkan wrote:
| This alternative: https://github.com/brianch/offline-chess-
| puzzles is linked from lichess puzzle page.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Can you please explain what it means? I have been using HN for
| years and only seeing this for the first time. Seems like some
| mod action but searching on google didn't return anything.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Yes, very strange and I was wondering why my comment which is
| on topic was added here...
|
| There are other comments which are clearly on-topic, e.g.
| direct feedback about the app, which have been relegated to
| this weird sub-thread.
|
| If this is a new feature, I'm not a fan of it. We have
| downvotes for off-topicness.
| ycombinete wrote:
| I've seen dang do something similar before to clean up a
| thread of off topic comments.
| tomhow wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44504071
| lucb1e wrote:
| Note that the discussion continues in the collapsed comment by
| tomhow: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44499848
|
| It says "stub for offtopicness" but, skimming them, literally
| all comments are on-topic. Not all substantial ('very nice
| app', 'whats the tech stack?') but a lot of other comments are
| a normal amount of substantial and also in there... I don't get
| it, but note that you can expand that subthread
| krishnasangeeth wrote:
| I posted this
|
| ``` Hi ,Congrats on the launch. I built a free iOS app also
| which has chess puzzles.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/knighty-chess-
| puzzles/id674524...
|
| Would appreciate feedback. ```
|
| Not sure if that's why it was moved to `stub for off
| topicness`. I wonder if it is some kind of categorisation
| logic based on text.
| lucb1e wrote:
| I'm also wondering if it's an automatic classification.
| Wouldn't expect that on HN, but the posts in there are _so_
| random that it almost must be.
|
| As for that specific comment, to be fair, I could actually
| understand: promoting your own product in someone else's
| thread without really saying anything at all about the
| submission (topic) that was posted could be seen as off-
| topic. I don't really mind it (I don't think I voted on
| it), but I could see a human also classify it that way
| krishnasangeeth wrote:
| Yeah , that's fair. More than promotion i was trying to
| suggest i had also built something similar and kind of
| understand the product space. It's this dev thing, can't
| shake it off i guess. But i get what you meant.
|
| Apart from that i have a theory that there is a lot of ML
| based ranking and classification that is happening at the
| backend.
| nso wrote:
| Why would you in 2025 only build for iOS?
| krishnasangeeth wrote:
| This was a swift app. I wanted a bit more native feel and
| didn't go for react native.
| tomhow wrote:
| Sorry about this. I've moved most of the comments in the stub
| back to the main thread.
|
| We've recently had some threads about new product
| announcements in which the thread quickly fills up with
| "booster" comments from new accounts or old/dormant accounts
| that come back to life just to post these comments. The
| "stub" is a way to hide those comments without
| penalizing/hiding the main thread and the product it's about.
|
| We were getting some emails and comments suggesting that this
| was happening here too, so I started trying to address it by
| moving some comments into the stub, intending to spend more
| time figuring out which ones were authentic and which ones
| seemed inorganic, but was slow to get back to it.
|
| I think in this case, most or even all of the comments are
| actually organic or authentic; people just really love a good
| chess app!
|
| Sorry for the confusion!
| lucb1e wrote:
| Thank you for clarifying! No worries about the delay of
| course, we all have more things to do. Do I understand
| correctly that a 'booster comment' is about steering the
| conversation / making the product look well-liked to those
| who open the thread, and not that it boosts the submission
| up in some way? (If you can say that in light of people
| gaming it)
| tomhow wrote:
| In this case the "things to do" was sleep, and the
| overarching issue is trying to do moderation work that
| really requires peak cognition when it's late and you're
| falling asleep, then leaving it half-done.
|
| By "booster" comments we just mean comments that are
| highly positive but low on substance. "Great app!".
| "Congrats on the launch!". Comments like that are often
| an indication that a friendship network has been rallied
| to show public support and create "social proof". But
| often these kinds of commenters try to get clever and add
| in Dorothy Dixer questions about the tech stack or
| something else to make the comment seem more authentic
| and substantive, and enable more details to be shared.
|
| Often when that happens, it's green (new) accounts or
| old/dormant accounts posting the comments and upvoting
| the thread, but there wasn't much of that here (though
| there was a little, which is what aroused suspicion).
|
| But these comments don't have any effect on the thread's
| ranking. It's only a vibes effect.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| I can assure you I didn't ask a single person I know to
| comment on this, most of my irl friends don't even know
| what hackernews is. All comments, even the ones that are
| hidden now are organic. Even I thought it's weird that an
| 8 year old dormant account decided to comment on my post
| but I have nothing to do with that.
| tomhow wrote:
| I believe you (and didn't actually think you'd rallied
| anyone, we thought something else was going on). Sorry
| for the bother!
| chatmasta wrote:
| If my comment was marked in this sweep, does that mean my
| account is marked as suspicious/booster?
| tomhow wrote:
| No not at all, nothing was "marked", just moved
| temporarily then moved back. Sorry to cause alarm :)
| 90s_dev wrote:
| A bit off topic, but since you mentioned doing your best
| thinking in the bathroom, two things you should try are (a) no
| caffeine, and (b) no soy. These should dramatically cut down on
| the number of times you have to go and how long it takes.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| I love my time there but thanks for your suggestion.
| tigroferoce wrote:
| Solo developer, no ads, no subscription. Take my money! And
| thanks for writing decent software.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Thank you for your kind words.
| tdiff wrote:
| I wonder where were those 100k puzzles sourced from?
| GCUMstlyHarmls wrote:
| TacticsMaster on F-Droid also says it has 100k puzzles, sourced
| from https://database.lichess.org/#puzzles, though that says it
| has 5 million puzzles, so perhaps 100k is just a coincidence, a
| nice number, or maybe of the 5m there's a nice subset.
|
| > Generating these chess puzzles took more than 100 years of
| CPU time.
|
| The page includes a link to the puzzle generator and tagger for
| interests sake.
| pncnmnp wrote:
| To add to this thread, here's how Lichess generates chess
| puzzles - https://github.com/ornicar/lichess-puzzler
| binarymax wrote:
| Not OP but generating puzzles isn't hard if you have a database
| of games and I've done it myself.
|
| For each game just fast forward to the end and ask for
| Stockfish to provide the solution. If it's guaranteed "mate in
| X" then you've got yourself a puzzle. You can have a classifier
| that grabs other puzzle types too ("win the queen in X" for
| example)
| zippyman55 wrote:
| At scale, It gets a little harder trying to explain the
| solution. There is often a combinatorial explosion of move
| possibilities, so it's not easy to just say MATE IN 4 if
| there are 40 or 50 potential responses all leading to mate.
| Granted they are obvious mates but there may be users who do
| not see the obvious mates.
| diane55 wrote:
| Very cool!
| ryanrasti wrote:
| Congrats on the launch!
|
| I was wondering -- how does the point-based rating system work?
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| It takes both yours and puzzle's rating in consideration while
| calculating. Just below the chessboard you can see "+12 -10"
| that means this puzzle will gain you 12 points if you solve
| this or you will lose 10 points if you fail.
|
| The system is based on ELO with the main difference being that
| the K factor in OffChess is variable,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system
| sirjaz wrote:
| Are you going to make a desktop client?
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| This should work on Macs by default, will look into making one
| for Windows/linux.
| spamalot159 wrote:
| Love it! The notification bar on my OnePlus 13 blocks access to
| the triple dot settings button on the top of my screen. ither
| than that it's clean.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| That's been fixed and the update - as soon as it is approved by
| Google should be available on play store.
| frankfrank13 wrote:
| Nice! Quick feedback:
|
| - it plays sound even when my (iOS) device is muted
|
| - would love an option to automatically go to next puzzle
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Thanks for your feedback, In the upcoming update I will... 1.
| add a toggle to disable sounds. 2. add an option to enable auto
| advance in future update.
| volemo wrote:
| It plays sound when the device is muted, has no preference to
| disable sound for the app, and moreover, the sound effects
| interfere with playing media, i.e. when I make a move the app
| pauses my music, playing in the background, to make a sound
| of a moving pawn.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback, will be fixed soon.
| neoromantique wrote:
| For some reason I cannot download it on Android with Aurora
| Market, perhaps it is too new?
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Only available on play store for now :(
| AiAi wrote:
| Thanks for rdx, it's the way I use reddit nowadays.
|
| I have only used OffChess briefly but one feature request I have
| is to remove the possible path of the piece when clicking on it
| (like Lichess).
|
| Another improvement would be the placement of the "next puzzle"
| button, that seems to be in a crowded place.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Updates are coming to rdx as well and thanks for your feedback
| on OffChess, will look into your suggestions definitely.
| esafak wrote:
| If you would like a chess puzzle book, try Raymond Smullyan's
| _The Chess Mysteries of the Arabian Knights_.
|
| https://raymondsmullyan.com/books/the-chess-mysteries-of-the...
| dustfinger wrote:
| I would love to see something like this for GNU / Linux desktop.
| Great work!
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| One day, I hope.
| heap_perms wrote:
| There is a nice native app for offline lichess puzzles. Written
| in rust:
|
| https://github.com/brianch/offline-chess-puzzles/
| johnnyfuego wrote:
| You had me when you said some of your best thinking happens in
| the bathroom.
|
| Looks cool. On Android the UI seems to extend below the status
| bar at the top and below the drawer at the bottom of the screen
| which creates some overlapping though.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| I have fixed the issue, just waiting for Google to approve the
| app.
| tenken wrote:
| You attribute chess.js as MIT license ... But I'm curious where
| you sourced 1,000 addon puzzles for $3.99.
|
| .... As I doubt you thought them all up yourself. You may want to
| attribute your non-derivative assets.
| thethimble wrote:
| Amazing! Would love "premoves" so that I can input the next move
| before the first move's animation completes. This will help
| maintain flow state for your more experienced users.
|
| See chessbook for an app that does this really well.
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| I will look into the app you suggested and try to implement
| premoves.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| I don't want to detract in the slightest from this fantastic app
| (I will be getting it shortly), I just want to point out another
| set of Chess puzzles for folk like me that enjoy this stuff.
| Check out the World Champs app, it has puzzles (mostly) taken
| from actual end games:
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chess-puzzles-world-champions/...
| valtism wrote:
| I'm just about to leave for a long international flight, so this
| is absolutely perfect for me!
|
| Glad I saw the comment about it being paid so I could get to the
| purchase screen before I lost internet. (As a side note, it says
| "Buy now for $3.99" but it's really $5.99 in my currency. Not
| sure if you can make the button match to the price in the locale)
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| It is just a placeholder for the price in your currency.
| Sometimes the play billing library takes a little while to get
| the price from the server. If you swipe up the app from app
| drawer(force close) and open it again it should show the
| correct price in your currency.
| fractalf wrote:
| Great! ...but doesn't work on my google-free Android. Ie, it
| requires play services. Please fix this :)
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Will have to implement a different billing system for that so
| it will take some time.
| ptrkrlsrd wrote:
| I recently deleted the chess.com app due to monthly price, so I'm
| thrilled to start using this app instead! Good job!
| avadhesh18 wrote:
| Thanks for your review.
| noja wrote:
| Could the hint not show the full move?
|
| i.e. just show the piece, not the piece and where to put it?
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