Building a Self-Promoting Pawn

February 13, 2025 6:09 AM

Congratulations. Your lowly pawn has reached the last rank and it's time to promote it to a mighty Queen. Now what are you going to do? Take the pawn off the board and replace it with your previously captured Queen, if there is one? Or with a rook placed upside down? Like an animal?
posted by Lemkin (10 comments total)

This is an amazing build. Incredible mechE skills. It's also wonderfully subversive in its own way and likely to make some... people's heads explode (although it will probably fly over their heads).
posted by scolbath at 6:54 AM on February 13 [4 favorites]

I love gadgety gadgets and enjoyed both the design process and the final result.
posted by Well I never at 8:29 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

I think it would be even better if the pawns just promoted themselves randomly, throwing off their feudal shackles!
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:51 AM on February 13 [11 favorites]

Pawns will never be free until the last King is strangled with the entrails of the last bishop.
posted by Lemkin at 9:21 AM on February 13 [14 favorites]

Every time I get to promote a pawn, I hear Suzy Izzard in my head going, "Fuck off, I'm the Queen!"
posted by xedrik at 9:28 AM on February 13 [5 favorites]

I find that driving a red (or white) handled poniard into the relevant square with "I promote it thus" works . . . for some definitions of works.
posted by BobTheScientist at 9:54 AM on February 13 [3 favorites]

I'm sure that this works as a metaphor for...
something.
posted by BlueHorse at 12:27 PM on February 13

book referenced [507movements]
posted by HearHere at 3:05 PM on February 13 [1 favorite]

He briefly mentions the possibility of underpromotion but you can't know if/which piece you're going to underpromote at the start of the game so if it comes up you're still swapping pieces like the rest of us animals.
posted by juv3nal at 5:25 PM on February 13 [2 favorites]

I remember seeing the video of this idea years ago, and was disappointed to realize it was just fanciful CG and not something it would be possible to make for real.

And now it's real! Bravo, engineers!
posted by straight at 1:40 AM on February 14