Observed arrival · 2026-09-16
ELONFISH, a machine trying to finish chess
An independent parody experiment that searches chess positions by scoring every legal move and pruning most branches.
○Open
⊠Login
$Paid
†Ads
✦Pretty
●Pro
◎Niche
◉Human
⚑Risk
ƒJS
Field notes
The interface exposes a pruning-based chess search rather than presenting only engine recommendations. In the displayed initial position, ELONFISH evaluates all 20 legal moves, keeps e4, Nf3, d4, and c4 inside a 2–4 move window, and stops the other 16 branches from receiving further compute in that pass. Its tree explorer, queued board list, archive, and log make the computational process part of the public artifact.
Observed signals
Read the marks
Editorial observations of this landing page, not a rating.
○OpenPublic substance visible
✦PrettyNotable craft visible
●ProPolished or operationally mature
◎NicheUnusually specific use
ƒJavaScriptBrowser-side code central
One card from the complete issue