Puzzlers on the Storm

It gives us great pride to announce the arrival of Puzzle Storm; a timed puzzle feature that prompts the user to solve puzzles with increasing difficulty as quickly as possible. Give it a try here.

The setup is fairly simple, you are given puzzles to solve and 3 minutes on the clock. Every correctly solved puzzle is worth a point. However, the remaining time will not tick away in boring predictable chunks. It is possible to both add and subtract time from the clock with the combo bar, located to the right of the chessboard. Every correct move (move, not puzzle) will add one point to the combo bar. When the bar is full, you get a time bonus. The time bonuses increase based on total combo points. Any incorrect answer causes you to lose 10 seconds and resets the combo bar.

After you run out of time you will see a graphic showing your score and some other statistics. You can click "play again" or scroll down to see a listing of the puzzles attempted. Clicking on a puzzle will take you to its standard puzzle page.

As with any new feature, there is some possibility of bugs and we'd like to hear about them, as well as any more general feedback. Please leave a comment or let us know on any of our social media sites.

Frequently asked questions

Is it like Puzzle Rush on chess.com?

Yes . It's also like Haste on blitztactics.com, and chesscup.org, and the speed trainer on chess24.com, and Tactics Frenzy on PlayMagnus.

For many years, chess sites have had timed tactics, and now Lichess does too.

Is it free to play it?

Yes . And we mean it. It's free for everyone forever, and it's unlimited. And there are no ads - as usual.

Is there a leaderboard?

No. At least not at the moment. Where there is a leaderboard, there is cheating. We don't think moderating this is a good use of our resources currently.

However you can see your best scores for each day, and the best score of each player is displayed on their profile page.

Will people memorize the puzzles?

We have more than a million puzzles, so it should be very rare to see a puzzle more than once. The Puzzle Storm set is renewed every 6 seconds.

Will there be more puzzle modes?

Maybe. We'll first see how this one goes, and listen to the feedback.