Children have been playing with wood scraps since ancient times but it wasn’t until the 1700’s that blocks were introduced as an educational device. Wood blocks aren’t intended merely for fun, they are considered to be a, “rational toy”, to teach kids about how buildings are made and about gravity. Young minds learn about spatial geometry and 3-D visualizing and how to assemble many small different parts into a whole with executive decision making.

One architect wrote that by the time he was 8 years old he had mastered the laws of practical stability in towers and arches because of his wood blocks, his constant companions.  Building blocks are a perfect toy and there are few things that give more play value for the money.

Even before learning the rules of chess I was very much aware of chess pieces.   I understood that chessmen represented an army but maybe the shapes should also give some visual indication of their movements and powers.

Shortly after learning chess at 10 years old, I remember looking at the Staunton Chessmen and wondering why they looked the way they do, turning the shapes around in my fingers, thinking that there must be a good reason for the designer to have made them like this.   “Why did chess pieces look the way they do”?  Could there be a better design that looked more modern?Almost every culture on earth has a version of chess pieces and that the Staunton Style is an English design that mirrored the Victorian Age.  

Then one summer day in 1994, I was having a coffee in the legendary Blackdog Billiard Cafe in New Westminister,and some chess players where attempting to stack chess pieces into a tower. I’d done the same thing as a kid.

Here were grown men trying to use chess pieces as building blocks. At that moment a light switch  turned on in my head  After making some mental notes about the concept of building blocks as chess pieces, I pondered what would be the most relevant shapes  to represent chess pieces.  my mind went to work and about 6 months later I had a dream and the Chessblocks were born on December 28^th 1994.

Chessblocks give intuitive visual cues of movement and numerical point values of chess pieces, without changing any of the rules. A huge breakthrough in chess design that represents the computer Age. 

In the very beginning I called it The New Westminister Set, Kid’s Chess 2000 and for the longest time, The Universal Chess System. A day before Global News interviewed me, I thought up Chessblocks and that name has stuck. 

I can’t see how it matters what chess pieces are called because they areconstantly changing depending on the language of the players.   Every language has their own nicknames, so most people aren’t calling them by their English names anyway.

Chessblocks transcend language with geometric symbols like a cube, which is common to all cultures. Instead of calling the chess piece a Rook (which could also be construed as a raven or a swindler) I simply call it exactly what it is, a cube. Now everyone is on an even playing field, because the blocks each have an equivalent geometric translation that is standard almost anywhere in the world.  The geometry of Chessblocks is what’s important, not what I chose to call them.

At one time or another most chess players will lose a playing piece and have to substitute in with another household object…if not actually fashioning one to replace it on the spot.

Sometimes we use an empty spool of thread for a Rook, a coin for a Pawn or a salt shaker for a Knight. Rarer is to go to the work shed and carve one out on the wood lathe.  Since 1995, I’ve had the opportunity to make Chessblocks out of wood, wax, ceramic, plaster, marble, granite, soap stone, plastic, epoxy, potatoes, apples, chocolate and cheese.  

Our website www.chessblocks.com,  held the # 1 ranking on Yahoo, under the category of, “chess pieces”, from 2000- 2002. - Universal Chess Set Created  and here is our First Generation Chessblocks .  

Whether you are a little tyke that never learns the great pastime called chess, or a chess master that never had time for building blocks, Chessblocks are for you.  

Best regards,

Jim Coady