Does Lord of the Rings have Chess?

the people of Middle Earth had a lot of fun hobbies hiking mountains slogging through marshes fighting Orcs running away from dragons you know a lot of good cardio but what if they just want to sit down and play a board game did they have chess the answer is yes but it probably wasn't like our modernday chess just a warning this video is going to get into the details of tolken material so if you're not interested you can skip to this timestamp okay moving on let's start with some quotes from Return of the King Gandalf and Pippen are in Min tith talking about Sauron and the war Gandalf says the board is set the pieces are moving but the enemy has the move and he is about to open his full game and pawns are likely to see as much of it as any later on Pippen is thinking and talking to himself and he says a pawn did Gandalf say perhaps but on the wrong chessboard so that's it those are all the clues we get but it probably wasn't like our modern-day version it was very likely an older version of Chess we're going to explore two points we're going to talk about one the culture and Technology of middlee is roughly equivalent to Europe around 1,000 ad and then we're going to talk about the state of Chess in Europe around 1 AD and we're going to map those two timelines together to arrive at what chess was probably like for the first point I'm building on the material of a previous video that points out that Middle Earth is intended to be a mythical prehistory of Europe let's unpack the cultural thing the cultures of Middle Earth have stups and chain mail which were started being used in Europe around the 6th Century but Middle Earth doesn't have the printing press which was introduced to Europe around the 15th century other Clues such as the lack of plate armor lead us to believe that culturally and technologically Middle Earth occurs roughly 1,000 ad in Europe Point number two let's talk about chess chess was imported from Arabia to Europe around the 9th century Arabian chest looked like this it had 64 squares 32 pieces each player had eight soldiers two Rooks two horses two elephants one counselor and one King the soldiers would move one square forward capture diagonally and they promoted to a counselor when they reached the end of the board Rooks would move horizontally and vertically any amount of squares horses would move in an l-shape elephants jumped two squares diagonally counselor would move one square diagonally and a king would move one square in any direction when chess moved into Europe Europeans made a few changes soldiers became pawns horses became Knights elephants became Bishops and the counselor became a queen but all the moves stayed the same all the pieces moved the same way Europeans also checkered the board which made things a lot easier so this is how chess was played around 1,00 ad in Europe it was in the 15th century in Spain that we get a lot of the modern rules that we're familiar with pawns can move two squares on the first move pawns can capture on pant we have castling Queens could move in every direction and Bishop could move freely along the diagonals but those rules happened after the printing press so that's way outside of the time frame that we're looking at also the Sten chest design which everyone uses today was designed in the 19th century in Spain so that's also outside of our time frame but that's an interesting question what would chest sets look like in Middle Earth our best clue would be the aisle of Lewis chess set these chess pieces were discovered in a grave on the aisle of Lewis just off the coast of of Scotland and date back to around the 12th century so that's pretty close to 1,000 ad well it's a lot closer than the ston chess design but there is one problem European chess has Bishops and Middle Earth definitely does not have Bishops so what could we use instead of Bishops well if you remember Arabian chess had elephants Middle Earth has elephants they're called olifants so there we go we have olifants instead of Bishops okay to wrap it all up here's my best speculation on what chess in Middle Earth would look like and play like it would have these pieces that moved this way it would have a checkered board like this and the pieces would have this kind of aesthetic now I'm sure that the different cultures in Middle Earth would design chest sets according to their preferences but you know this is this video gives us a place to start and here's something that I would love I would love to see people design a chess set based upon these rules and these pieces and make a video and send it to me I would love to see that also if you want to play chess I will not back down from that challenge okay that's all I have for you today hit the button hit the Bell catch you later