Can you do 28 mate-in-2 puzzles in a week?
I made a Bluesky bot.
Side note: I'll be at US Amateur Team East this weekend (Feb. 15 to 17) in New Jersey. If you're there and you see me between rounds, say hi, or meet me at the hangout hosted by Nate Solon and Ben Johnson Sunday night at the Hilton bar. Perhaps a debate will break out where I take the side of USATE is good and Nate takes the side of USATE is bad.
I made a fun little thing with chess puzzles. On the social network Bluesky, it's a bot, or automated account, that posts a random mate-in-2 puzzle from the Lichess puzzle database four times a day. Reply to a post with a correct answer, and you earn a point. At the end of the week the bot will post the standings, and while there are no cash prizes (yet), the pride of seeing your name at the top of the list should be motivation enough. Follow Chess Puzzle Bot on Bluesky.
Doing a little bit of tactics each day is probably good for your chess, and this truly is just a little bit - these are positions from real games on Lichess, so they are usually quite a bit easier to solve than mate-in-2 compositions you may have seen that are designed to be impossibly hard.
You have 24 hours to solve each puzzle, so if you log on once a day at the same time each day, you'll have four puzzles that are open for solving.
If this is popular, I may add harder puzzles or other features. As of now, everyone can earn a point on every puzzle, but maybe it would also be fun to have a contest where only the first correct answer wins. We'll have to see what people's feedback is.
If you're interested in the code, it's open source here.
I'm working on Polgar's book and doing 4 pages, 24 mate-in-two puzzles every day.
This is such a clever blend of social play and tactical training, love how it turns daily puzzle solving into a lightweight community ritual. The 24-hour window and real-game positions make it super accessible without losing the spirit of challenge. Looking forward to seeing how the format evolves, the idea of adding speed-based or themed contests sounds promising too. And major respect for open-sourcing it — always great when the tools match the spirit of the game.