This is too funny to not be more widely known, I had to make this post.



Our story begins in November of 2018. Chess.com releases a new feature called "Puzzle Rush". For the none of you that aren't familiar with it, Puzzle Rush is a timed chess puzzle game where you try to solve puzzles while staying ahead of a ticking clock. 3 Months later, the twitter account "PuzzleRushChess" is created, it has no official connection to chess.com, simply a fan page, although it would be easy to miss the phrase "fan run" written in the description. The account also confusingly uses "us" and "our" when referring to puzzle rush.



In the beginning it simply posted links to interesting puzzles and what was happening on the leaderboard. But after only a month, the account's youthful innocence was lost forever. It seems that there is a dark secret behind the creation of Puzzle Rush.







While still retweeting various puzzle rush related tweets, almost ALL of the PuzzleRushChess account's original tweets were dedicated to the feud with ChessClubLive. The two went back and forth endlessly, even managing to involve some titled players in the fray, IM Kostya Kavutskiy weighed in.











He would pay for his insolence:







(Lichess puzzles are created with an algorithm from a database of games played on Lichess, there is even a link to the game where the position occurred on every puzzle.)



Finally an official response arrived from Chess.com via IM Greg Shahade:







Nothing to do with creating it eh Mr. Shahade? How CONVENIENT!



ChessClubLive then released numerous Puzzle Rush competitors, one called ChessMasterCube and another a gift-wrapped lawsuit:







The sniping continued for a while with neither side able to break the equilibrium, until a few weeks ago when the PuzzleRushChess account started to act very strangely. It seemed it had been hacked, and it doesn't take a Sherlock-Holmes-level detective to figure out who is responsible.















So it looks like we finally have a winner! Mr. ChessClubLive has gained control of his adversary's account and will now use it to spread the TRUTH of puzzle rush and where it comes from!



The only problem is that I don't believe any of it, not one bit.



Let me tell you a bit more about Mr. ChessClubLive, he's a software developer with a style best described as "quantity instead of quality". His creative process seems to boil down to waiting for more talented developers to make something that people like and then trying to piggy-back onto it somehow.



Lets take a look at his portfolio: play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Chess+Club+Live&hl=en



His most famous creation, the titular, social.chessclublive.com/ is a truly horrendous creation that is basically Lichess packed inside of some extra "social" features. You may want to put a condom on your mouse before clicking that link. Then, there are also 4 puzzle rush clones, and 8 versions of "Kung Fu Chess", a very old idea that has been implemented elsewhere more than once.



It seems relatively clear to me that not only does ChessClubLive control the PuzzleRushChess account currently, he always controlled it, he created it. The style is just too similar. Both of them make tweets that are half crazy accusations, and half @-ing randos hoping to get a reply and raise visibility.



Full credit to him for the scheme. I'm legit impressed. I'm just left with one question: how is this man so full of creativity when promoting his work, and so lacking in creativity while making it? Couldn't all this energy have been invested in finding a new and interesting idea? People on the internet are so weird....





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