Chess puzzles with a pencil: calculate first, check after
On paper, no app tells you whether your move was right, so you have to work out the whole line before you look at the answer. Here is what changes when you print your puzzles, how to solve them with a pencil, and what a screen still does better.
What changes on paper
Most puzzle apps check each move the moment you play it. A wrong move is marked at once and another try costs one click, so it is tempting to play whatever looks likely and let the app do the checking. On paper, nothing is marked until you turn to the solutions.
That one difference changes the work. You cannot try a move and see. You have to find your move, then your opponent’s best reply, then your answer to it, and decide for yourself when the line is finished. It is the work a game asks of you: nobody tells you whether a move works before you play it.
- No trying and seeing. Nobody marks a wrong first move for you: you have to find out for yourself whether it fails, and why.
- You calculate to the end. The puzzle is over when you have checked every reply you can think of, not when a screen says so.
- You write the line down. Writing commits you to a move, and later shows you exactly where your calculation went wrong.
- No notifications. A printed page has no next puzzle one tap away, no messages and no streak to keep alive.
- Easy to share. A page can lie on the table between you and a child or a friend, and you can both point at the squares.
An example: the check that is not mate
Black can give four checks here, and only one of them is mate. On a screen, a natural first try is 1…Qb5+, a queen check right beside the king. The app would mark it wrong at once, and you would simply try another move. On paper you have to see the reason yourself: nothing protects the queen on b5, so 2.Kxb5 takes it.
The mate is 1…Qa4#. The queen checks along the a-file, from a square the king cannot reach. White’s own pawn on b6 and rook on b7 take two of the king’s squares, and the queen covers the other three: a5, a7 and b5. Nothing can take the queen or block the check.
Before you write down a check, ask how your opponent can answer it: move the king, block, or take the checking piece. A checking piece that the king can simply take is just a lost piece.
How to solve chess puzzles on paper
- Print a little at a time. One chapter or a few pages is enough for a session.
- Hide the solutions. Keep the answer pages face down until your line is written.
- Use a board if you like, but do not move the pieces. The work happens in your head; the board only helps you read the diagram.
- Write the whole line. Your move, the best reply you can find and your answer to it, until the king is mated or the material is won.
- Give each puzzle a fair try. If you are stuck, write your best attempt anyway: a wrong line on paper can be corrected, a blank one cannot.
- Check, then find what you missed. When you are wrong, look for the reply you did not consider, write it beside your line, and solve the puzzle again a week later.
Write the moves in notation, as on a scoresheet. When your opponent has two sensible replies, write both, one under the other. And when you stop, write why: mate, a piece won, or a position you judge better. That last word makes you check that the line is really over.
What paper does not do
Paper has limits, and it is fair to name them. Nothing tells you at once that you were wrong, so a mistake stays in your head until you check. It is slower: writing every line takes time, so you solve fewer puzzles in an hour. And a printed page does not adapt to you, while a puzzle app can pick each new puzzle close to your rating.
A page also cannot refute your own wrong idea. A good solution explains the most tempting mistake, but if you went another way, you need a board, or an analysis board on a screen, to see why your line fails. You also need a printer, or a print shop or library that will print the pages for you. And nothing stops you from peeking at the answers: on paper, honesty is up to you.
None of this is a reason to give up the screen. The two work well together: quick puzzles on an app for volume, and printed ones, solved slowly, for calculation. For that slow work, our article on how to calculate in chess gives a method, step by step.
Getting started with printed puzzles
Start small, at your level: most puzzles should take real thought, and few should leave the page blank. Print one chapter, solve two puzzles a day with the whole line written out, and at the end of the week go back over the ones you missed. Our article on how many puzzles to solve a day explains how to build that routine, and the one on starting chess puzzles with a child shows how to share the page with a young player.
For puzzles ready to print, The Knight’s Notebook sends sixty new ones each month at your level, with lines beside each diagram to write your answer and every solution explained at the back. 300 Chess Puzzles gathers three hundred in ten themes, from about 600 to 1800 Elo, and each theme opens with a short lesson. To try the paper way first, take the twenty free puzzles of our Lichess study and write your line before you play a single move.