
Somebody Please Explain This... - shawndumas
http://xkcd.com/839/
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ph0rque
<http://www.explainxkcd.com/2010/12/27/explorers/>

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CallMeV
On this 3x3 chess board, the black bishop can only ever move on a diagonal,
which means it can only travel onto white squares: it can never land on a
black square. Since the central square is white, the bishop has put the food
in the middle. The white knight can only make knight moves - from its starting
point, it can only move edge-corner, edge-corner, edge-corner, edge-corner
before coming back to its starting point. The knight can never land in the
middle square at all, so it will eventually starve. The knight can, however,
move onto the black squares: in fact, it _has_ to land on a black square every
other move. The bishop's claim that he was "that close" to capturing the
knight is also exaggerated - it can be shown how, barring an error, the pieces
could move about that board forever in an endless loop.

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alex_h
It appears to be a bunch of mixed gaming metaphors. "He stepped up to the
plate and scored a touchdown.. checkmate" kind of thing.

~~~
mhd
That's the "backstory", the main joke is just about how the chess pieces move,
i.e. that the bishop can't ever get into a black square and that the knight
can't ever get to the food. I think the rest of the dialog is just the scenery
of a world where game pieces talk.

