The story in three lines. On the shortest day of the year, Captain Castle's academy turns its hall into an eighteenth-century Paris café and re-stages the oldest chess trap there is. Inkling, the prompter, has to decide whether a pinned knight should move anyway, and learns from Sir Pinwell that a pin only holds if moving the pinned piece is really bad. Merle the Gleaner takes a queen that only looked free, and Linnet the Netweaver mates in two moves with three small pieces.

One question to ask. "Was the knight really stuck?" Then a second one: "Why do you think White left the queen there?"

One thing to do at the table. Set up a board, or draw one. Play the seven moves together with your child as White. Then play them again with your child as Black, and see whether they take the queen this time. Ask what made them decide.

The grown-up layer. The game is about rules of thumb. "Don't move a pinned piece" is usually right, and Black lost by relying on it without checking. The book's Honest Page notes what is uncertain: the date, whether Légal really played without a rook, and the move order, which may have been tidied after the fact. A grown-up version, with the historical argument in full, is on the Whetstone as "Today's classic".