Hey it ain't checkers, baby

From Vexed In The City, Karyn learns the hard way that chess is a challenging game.

Some years ago, C. tried to teach me to play chess. Foolishly, I figured that since I could knock off a mean game of checkers, chess would be a piece of proverbial cake. After all, how different could the games be, if they were played on the same board with what seemed to me to be a similar objective?

Suffice it to say that after several hours - long, long hours - of frustration on both our parts, we agreed to put away the chessboard and find another means of recreation, preferably in which the rules were not intimidating in their number, were at least marginally clear and did not require me to take notes in order to engage in play.

Apparently chess has some special rules that even long time players like myself aren't aware of.

...you can move this way but not that way and this piece can only move in this direction but only when the sun is in scorpio and the wind blows northwest and you have the secret handshake and password unless it's Tuesday in which case you also have to have your decoder ring.