Jay Peters is a news editor covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
Duolingo will soon be able to help you learn another new skill: chess.
The platform’s new chess course will use short puzzles, such as moving a knight to the correct spot to practice its L-shaped movement or checkmating a king that’s stuck in a corner, to help teach you the game. You’ll also be able to play “mini-matches” or full games against Duolingo’s Oscar character, who serves as your coach through the lessons.
Duolingo gave me a brief demo of the chess course on a recent video call, and it looks like it could be a lot of fun. The team’s approach was to “make chess as accessible as possible,” Duolingo group product manager Edwin Bodge tells The Verge, and the course will offer lessons for a wide range of skill levels so that people can jump in at whatever level of familiarity they already have for chess.
Chess joins topics like music and math that aren’t language-based but can still be practiced via Duolingo. I asked if the company plans to build courses around other games, and staff software engineer Sammi Siegel says that “while we don’t have any plans to share right now, I think we’re just seeing how this launch goes and then we’ll go from there.”
The chess course is launching in beta testing on iOS in English, according to Monica Earle, Duolingo’s PR director. Earle estimates that in four to six weeks, more people on iOS will be able to try it, and then it will head to Android and be available in other languages down the line.
