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Comment by naet | Hacker News Reader

The fact that it doesn't highlight where you've moved already makes it no fun.

Edit: the directions weren't super clear. I see that you're actually supposed to go to every square in a specific order (first G8, then F8, E8, etc), not just visit them all in any order. That means you have to do a bunch of laborious trips around the queen to go to certain squares since you won't have enough room to maneuver directly there.

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I agree, but I wonder if it's on purpose.

I found the repo[1] and it's very small readme says it's a "Chess visualization exercise"

So I'm wondering if it's an extreme exercise in memorization to help you visualize games better.

(I'm just talking out my butt here, I know nothing about chess puzzles)

[1]: https://github.com/jairtrejo/knight-moves

why would I practice visualizing not-chess information about chess pieces, when I could visualize actual chess information?

The history of a pieces moves is irrelevant to chess, except in extreme corner cases of repetition.

The history is irrelevant here as well, you just need to know the next goal, which is always indicated.

I see that now. The UI has poor discover ability of the goal, especially on mobile.

It is, because you need to get to the square that's indicated, not any random square.

They should highlight the target square in the board instead of only writing it in the "clock".

> should highlight the target square in the board instead of only writing it in the "clock".

If it's a visualization exercise, they should not. Gaining intuition for notation is strangely enabling, particularly if you have an algebraic mind.

yes, i have an algebraic mind, and I find it easy to visual where the squares are, and if you say "N-KP4", I'm Johnny-on-the-spot! now, what's this a-b-c stuff?

N-KP4 is descriptive notation [1] which was the standard notation used in chess until about 1980. Ne4 is algebraic notation [2] which is the standard notation used in chess today (since 1980).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_notation

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_notation_(chess)

I'm relieved to see that the following is included at that link:

The term "algebraic notation" may be considered a misnomer, as the system is unrelated to algebra.

It depends upon what you are trying to visualize. If you are trying to visualize the pattern of the knight's moves, e.g. how to reach a specific square using a sequence of moves, then highlighting the target would be more valuable. The displacement matters, not the absolute positions. The absolute positions are more of a hindrance since it makes it more difficult to generalize the sequence of moves.

The point is learning to generalize the sequence of moves, and that's why it doesn't give any visual cue.

In a real chess position, where the knight must go is the easy part because there something interesting to do there (like capturing a piece). The problem here is that the chessboard is empty, so it's difficult to remember where you should go.

The interesting part is finding the knight trajectory, reading the notation is boring and easy.

(If the point of the exercise was to read the notation, it should be a different game, like clicking that square as fast as possible.)

> where the knight must go is the easy part because there something interesting to do there (like capturing a piece)

The aim is to build an intuition for where the knight can traverse without getting captured in N moves. If you can see further into the future than your opponent, you may notice a pattern before they have a chance to stop it. This intuition isn’t fundamentally tied to notation. But having intuition for the notation facilitates it since that’s how discussion and literature will interface with you.

That's how I took it as well. Everyone talks about highlighting stuff but you don't get highlights in real games. I got more comfortable with knight manouvers and chess notation thanks to this puzzle.

It should definitely have some visual tutorial for people to understand how it works though.

Still doesn't make it sense from a UX perspective. You can make it an option to highlight the square or just show coordinates and cater for both crowds.

Ah ok! If this is part of some sort of chess training course, this would make sense. Sadly, HN is really bad at presenting context for a submission.

Turns out you're supposed to do them one at a time, in order. Tracking the visited squares doesn't add much for that

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