"Plastic Animal Chess": My daughter's chess game

A view of "Plastic Animal Chess" in action, on a tile floor.

I just wrote a piece for Wired UK on creativity and child-like irreverence, and I talk about the game my daughter invented, a variant on chess. I had taken some photos, though, that did not make it into the story.

The first is this one here at the top, an animal-level view of the game in action on the tile floor of my sun room.

The second is below, my daughter’s hand-written rules themselves, with blanks where we filled in the animals used for each piece type.

My eight-year-old daughter's hand-written rules for plastic animal chess.

UPDATE: Wired has published a “Part 2″ to my daughter’s chesscapades… In this new piece, they write up my daughter’s hand-written rules, as well as put in some rules not quite in her rules, because she left a lot ambiguous. When she and I played, she chose a 5 by 17 tile stretch of the sun room, with the pieces at opposite ends. I’ll need to get her to remind me of the exact starting positions.

UPDATE: On the May 6, 2011, episode of ‘The Big Bang Theory’, they had a funny bit with Sheldon creating a radical new form of geeky chess. Could it be that they saw the story and it motivated their bit? Who knows? But, between you and me, I’m telling my little girl she’s responsible for the bit.

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For more on irreverence and creativity, see irreverence and aloofness and… anglerfish.

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Mark Changizi is Director of Human Cognition at 2AI, and the author of The Vision Revolution (Benbella Books, 2009) and the upcoming book Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man (Benbella Books, 2011). His first book was The Brain from 25000 Feet(Springer, 2003).

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