back to article We shall CRUSH you, puny ROBOT... with CHESS

An online forum is using chess puzzles as CAPTCHAs rather than the more traditional challenge-response tests which ask the user to identify distorted text. The CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is a way for a website or online service to establish that a human has come calling …

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  1. JimmyPage Silver badge
    Joke

    What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow ...

    that should fox them.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow ...

      African or European?

      1. FartingHippo
        Mushroom

        Re: What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow ...

        Aieeeeeeeee......!!!

  2. James 51

    Computers can beat grand masters but how powerful and expensive were they? I know Moore's law (pet peeve, should be Moore's observation) will bring that down but in the mean time could be useful.

    1. John H Woods Silver badge

      Grandmaster skill not required...

      ... if a puzzle is to be easy enough for a reasonably competent chess player to solve, then an average PC running gnuchess will also be able to do it. Massive horsepower was only required to defeat grandmasters because their game is at a *much* higher level than that of even the most talented players in a normal chess club.

      1. NomNomNom

        Re: Grandmaster skill not required...

        No it's because grandmasters cheat. They memorize all the possible moves before the game even starts and some of them cast spells during the match. I know this because i used to be a grandmaster myself years ago, but I couldn't cope with the extravagant lifestyle and all the drugs so I switched to work in IT.

        1. Silverburn
          WTF?

          Re: Grandmaster skill not required...

          Spells?

        2. MrZoolook
          Terminator

          Re: Grandmaster skill not required...

          "No it's because grandmasters cheat."

          I'll always remember a story I heard years ago, probably not true, but good all the same.

          During one of these Human vs Machine chess tournaments, the Grand-Master complained that the Computer made an illegal move. The programmers were adament that their code was performing correctly as they had programmed it to only perform legal moves as per the rules of the game.

          They subsequently ripped apart the code and discovered that the computer had indeed 'learned' an illegal move. It transpired that the Grand-Master had played the exact same move earlier in the tournament, and continued to win that match. The computer (which was not programed to error-check its opponants - After all, Grand-Masters know the rules... right?) had thus integrated that illegal move into it's database.

      2. Psyx
        Thumb Up

        Re: Grandmaster skill not required...

        "Grandmaster skill not required... if a puzzle is to be easy enough for a reasonably competent chess player to solve, then an average PC running gnuchess will also be able to do it."

        Maybe that's not the idea.

        Maybe the idea is to stop people who can't figure out how chess pieces move from using the forum.

        And this I applaud.

        Can we expand it to the entire Internet?

    2. Martin
      FAIL

      Not even a PC is needed....

      The first one I saw was a "mate in one" - that could have been done on most chess programs running on a palm pilot or similar ten years ago.

      It's just for fun - if they were to use something like this on TicketMaster, it would be hacked in no time.

    3. Don Jefe
      Thumb Up

      Re:

      Agree completely. Misuse of terms like 'law' distort the thinking of non-science types. The 'theory' of evolution is an easy example that gives idiots ammunition.

    4. Ed_UK
      Thumb Up

      "should be Moore's observation"

      Yes, yes, YES! Please accept an upvote for exposing that particular bit of bolloxy hype!

      More cliche debunking to follow. "There's a black hole in our finances." FFS

      1. James 51

        Thanks.

  3. Anonymous Coward 101

    I imagine it would be extremely easy to write an anti-CAPTCHA tool to fox this. However, why bother when this is one forum for reasonably brainy people?

  4. Babbit55

    I don't know, some of those CAPITCHA images are almost unreadable! I think a chess move may actually be easier!

  5. DJ Smiley
    Facepalm

    The real use...

    The technology is often used to frustrate humans signing up to web mail accounts and similar services.

  6. DJ Smiley
    Facepalm

    Limited number of tries might help

    I just tried it out. It let me retry as many times as I needed to hit the right combination.

    For people who think themselves intelligent, they've utterly failed in understanding how spam bots work.

  7. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    I prefer the calculus

    Also, after the fifth win for checkmate-in-one-move, I get the same situation over and over...

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hi I'm the Chessmaster

    Want to play a game?

    1. Silverburn

      Re: Hi I'm the Chessmaster

      Can we play "Global thermonuclear war"?

      1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

        Re: Hi I'm the Chessmaster

        African or European? Wait, I'll get the hang of this reference thing in a minute.

  9. wowfood

    Not the first

    I signed up for an online chess site years ago which had a chess game as its captcha. You started off with a king in check, you had to get the kind out of check to authorize your account.

  10. Steve Knox
    Joke

    Shurley the best CAPTCHA would be a fiendishly difficult problem which a computer can solve relatively easily?

    Then you only get through if you fail...

  11. NomNomNom

    gonna see how many images of spam i can post on their forum

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hal - I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.

    Dave - Presumably your stuck on bishop to knight 4

    Hal - Daisy, daisy etc

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  13. Old Handle
    Thumb Up

    This is a rare example of a situation where security by obscurity really works well. Because each spam posted is of marginal benefit, it's only worth doing if they can post thousands with minimal effort. So when a small site implements a novel CAPTCHA, they're as good as bulletproof as far as the spammers are concerned. They could write a bot capable of beating it, but why bother? Of course if lots of sites started using it, or a big player like Google, it would become worth doing.

    In other words the chess puzzle itself isn't really that good, but since no one else is using it, no bot in the wild will have the faintest clue how to deal with it.

  14. mark 63 Silver badge
    Facepalm

    um....

    but , but , computers are awsome at chess!

  15. Crisp
    Terminator

    First it was deciphering messed up words, then it was jigsaw puzzles.

    I'm waiting for the day where a website needs a drop of blood and a soft tissue sample to verify me as human.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sound like a porn site validation check..

    "In order to enter this site please tell us how you shift your bishop"

    1. Psyx
      Joke

      Re: Sound like a porn site validation check..

      Oddly they used exactly the same validation question on Cardinals attempting to enter the Vatican last week.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sound like a porn site validation check..

        They have a different system for religion organisations...it's called RAPTCHA

  17. Stevie

    Bah!

    An acronym that drops three words, one of them a verb, doesn't work and needs retconning to something that does.

  18. Thomas 4

    Spam bots...

    ...just got pawned.

  19. HippyFreetard
    Meh

    Clever stuff!

    That's clever. No machine could ever crack a chess puzzle better than a human. Sarah Connor 1, Skynet 0...

    I think all chatrooms should have an KOL Altar of Literacy style captchas:-

    When they get [there|their|they're], [there|their|they're] going to put on [there|their|they're] mittens.

    [Your|You're] nuts if you think I'm going to polish [your|you're] armor for free.

    1. Steven Roper
      Headmaster

      Re: Clever stuff!

      The problem with that approach is that it would exclude more human beings than the current distorted-text CAPTCHA currently does...

      1. Psyx

        Re: Clever stuff!

        "The problem with that approach is that it would exclude more human beings than the current distorted-text CAPTCHA currently does..."

        Only illiterate ones.

        And I view that as a positive step forward.

        1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

          Re: Clever stuff!

          And if your vision is getting dodgy due to macular degeneration, too bad.

          I have no problem with screen text, but some of those CAPTCHA images are indecipherable.

    2. Irony Deficient

      altar of literacy

      HippyFreetard, don’t forget “[to|too|two]”, “[ewe|yew|you]”, and “[for|fore|four]”. You could also expand “[your|you’re]” to “[ewer|yore|your|you’re]”. (Personally, I’d split them into “[ewer|you’re]” and “[yore|your]” as appropriate, but of course pronunciation varies by dialect.)

      Just for laughs, throw in “[armor|armour]” as a trick question.

    3. MrZoolook
      Thumb Up

      Re: Clever stuff!

      "When they get [there|their|they're], [there|their|they're] going to put on [there|their|they're] mittens.

      [Your|You're] nuts if you think I'm going to polish [your|you're] armor for free."

      With education standards going down as they are... I think that test would beat most university graduates. Not that that would be a bad thing.

    4. hplasm
      Happy

      Re: Clever stuff!

      ...polish [your|you're] [armor|armour] for free.

      Int'l version...

  20. IronSteve

    Can they please call the new technology Garry Captcharov?

  21. IR
    Thumb Up

    I help run a specialist forum. CAPTCHAs weren't stopping the spammer, neither were the questions such as "Which of these is not a colour? Blue, red, or car". As soon as we switched the questions to being basic things about the specialist subject, we got rid of 99% of potential spammers. You have to put a contact address in there too, because there is always the odd person who wants to join but knows little about the subject yet.

  22. John F***ing Stepp

    Led any good rooks lately?

    And now I will go hide.

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