Daily chess puzzle
One position a day. The same one for everybody who opens it, chosen by the date rather than by a server, and it gets harder every day from Monday to Sunday.
The same position for everybody, chosen by the date
A daily chess puzzle is only interesting if it is the same puzzle. If the site handed you a random position it would be practice, which is a fine thing and is what the rest of this site is for. What makes a daily worth coming back to is that the person you argue with about it got the identical position, in the identical orientation, on the identical day.
Reflex Chess does that with arithmetic rather than with a server. The date picks the puzzle: the same date always resolves to the same position, on any device, for any visitor, with nobody signed in and nothing stored. There is no account to make, nothing is emailed to you, and because the whole corpus already ships with the app the puzzle resolves with the network switched off.
It gets harder from Monday to Sunday
Most dailies claim a difficulty curve. This is ours, in full. The corpus of 10,440 positions is sorted by its Lichess difficulty rating and cut into 7 bands of equal size, one per weekday. Monday deals from the easiest band and Sunday from the hardest, so the week ramps whether or not you are having a good one.
| Day | Difficulty (Elo) | Positions | Before it repeats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 404–1166 | 1,348 | 26 years |
| Tuesday | 1166–1399 | 1,348 | 26 years |
| Wednesday | 1399–1517 | 1,348 | 26 years |
| Thursday | 1517–1638 | 1,348 | 26 years |
| Friday | 1638–1803 | 1,348 | 26 years |
| Saturday | 1803–1923 | 1,348 | 26 years |
| Sunday | 1924–2099 | 1,354 | 26 years |
Two things fall out of that table that are worth saying plainly.
The bands are equal in size, not in Elo. Monday spans 404–1166 and Thursday spans 1517–1638, which looks lopsided until you notice the counts are identical. Round Elo brackets would have dealt wildly uneven pools, and the easy weekdays would have started repeating decades before the hard ones.
Nothing above 2100 is dealt. A position that hard is a good thing to have in a course, where you chose to be there and can retry for as long as you like. As the one puzzle everybody in the world gets today, on one attempt, it is a wall. That cap drops the top of the corpus and leaves 9,442 positions in the rotation — enough that no weekday repeats itself before 2051.
The streak, and what it costs you
Solving the day’s puzzle extends a run, and missing a day ends it. That is the entire mechanic and it is the reason a daily works at all: one position is a small enough ask that you do it, and a run is a large enough thing that you would rather not drop it.
It costs no account. The run is kept on your own device rather than on a server, so there is nothing to sign up for, nothing to confirm, and no email involved. The trade, said plainly: it lives in that browser, so clearing the browser clears the run.
The result you can copy out is the week, not the answer: seven marks, one per day, showing which you got and which you let go. There is no position in it and no move in it, so posting it cannot ruin the puzzle for the person reading it.
Last week’s seven, with the answers
The seven days that have finished, oldest first — one of every weekday, so the ramp above is shown rather than asserted. These are the positions the daily actually dealt on those dates, resolved by the same function the app resolves them with. They are over, so the answers are published: every line is worked through move by move under the position.
The amber squares are the move the opponent has just played. That is the mistake, not the answer.
Friday 31 July 2026
White to move. Find the best move.
Show the answer
17...d4 18.e4 Qf6 19.exf5
The line wins a piece. The position comes from the London System set, and Lichess rates it 1665 for difficulty — band 5 of 7, which is the friday band.
Saturday 1 August 2026
White to move. Find the best move.
Show the answer
19...Rgxh7 20.Rxh7 Rxh7 21.g4 Qd8 22.gxf5
The line wins a piece. The position comes from the French Winawer set, and Lichess rates it 1854 for difficulty — band 6 of 7, which is the saturday band.
Sunday 2 August 2026
Black to move. Find the best move.
Show the answer
17.Re2 17...Nxg3 18.fxg3 18...Rh8
The line comes out level on material and ahead on position. The position comes from the Exchange Ruy set, and Lichess rates it 2005 for difficulty — band 7 of 7, which is the sunday band.
Monday 3 August 2026
Black to move. Find the best move.
Show the answer
20.Re1 20...Nf3+ 21.Qxf3 21...Qxe1+
The line comes out 2 pawns ahead. The position comes from the Opening Traps set, and Lichess rates it 1085 for difficulty — band 1 of 7, which is the monday band.
Tuesday 4 August 2026
White to move. Find the best move.
Show the answer
39...Kg8 40.Nh6+ Kh8 41.Qg8+ Rxg8 42.Nf7#
The line ends in checkmate. The position comes from the Double Check set, and Lichess rates it 1308 for difficulty — band 2 of 7, which is the tuesday band.
Wednesday 5 August 2026
White to move. Find the best move.
Show the answer
18...Rad8 19.Rxg6+ Kh7 20.Rxg4
The line wins a piece. The position comes from the Dragon set, and Lichess rates it 1490 for difficulty — band 3 of 7, which is the wednesday band.
Thursday 6 August 2026
Black to move. Find the best move.
Show the answer
29.f3 29...Qxf3+ 30.Rxf3 30...Rb1+ 31.Rf1 31...Rxf1#
The line ends in checkmate. The position comes from the Mate in Three set, and Lichess rates it 1610 for difficulty — band 4 of 7, which is the thursday band.
Where the positions come from
All of them are from the Lichess puzzle database, released under CC0, which means they are positions out of games that were actually played and actually lost, rather than compositions somebody arranged to be pretty. The difficulty rating attached to each one is the database’s own, earned the same way a player’s is: it moves when people solve it or fail it. That is why the bands in the table above are trustworthy in a way that a hand-labelled easy/medium/hard is not.
The same 10,440 positions are the corpus the rest of the site teaches from, so a daily you could not solve has a page explaining the pattern behind it. That is the part a puzzle-a-day site on its own cannot do.
- All the tacticsEvery motif with its own page and worked positions
- What to work on at your ratingFrom beginner to 1600, what actually moves the number
- What is my chess rating?Twelve positions, no login, an estimate in a few minutes
Common questions
Is the daily chess puzzle the same for everyone?
Yes. The date chooses the position, so every visitor on a given day gets the identical puzzle. Nobody is served an easier one for being new or a harder one for being good.
Do I need an account to solve it?
No. There is no sign-up, no email and no login. Nothing is stored anywhere unless you choose to make an account for the rest of the site.
How hard is the daily puzzle?
It depends on the day. Monday deals from positions the Lichess database rates 404 to 1166, and Sunday from 1924 to 2099. The full table is above.
Does the daily puzzle work offline?
Yes. The date does the choosing and the positions ship with the app, so nothing has to be fetched to work out which puzzle today is.
Will the same puzzle ever come round again?
Not for a very long time. Each weekday has its own band of 1,348 positions and deals one a week, which is about 26 years before a weekday has used all of them.
Where can I see the answer?
Every position on this page has its full line under “show the answer”, written out move by move. They are collapsed rather than hidden so that the page is a puzzle first.