John Saunders’ Chess Blog: Brexit Chess Tweet

It’s a simple idea. The English opening, 1.c4, happens to open up a diagonal for the white queen (which I am using to represent HM Queen Elizabeth of England), so I show her exiting the board (representing the EU) on the following turn to an imaginary square beyond the d1-a4 diagonal. Took me ten minutes to knock it together and put it on Twitter.

I’m usually pleased if my little jokes get half a dozen retweets and a similar number of ‘likes’. I think I might have had as many as 20 or 30 retweets on a good day. But, by those modest standards, this one proved positively viral – 675 retweets to date, and 733 likes, without me doing anything to promote it (well, until this blog post). It has been translated into other languages, and had people arguing over what the symbols represent (it has entered a wider, non-chess-literate sphere). Hat tip to Peter Doggers for prompting the idea. Still slightly gobsmacked that it struck such a chord with people.