The story in three lines. Captain Castle's academy re-stages a famous 1858 chess game for Lantern Night, and Inkling, now eleven, is the prompter who has to call each teacher when their move comes. She learns to wait one move before naming what she sees. Morphy's pieces all come into play and give checkmate in seventeen moves, while two of Black's pieces never move at all.

One question to ask. "Who did Inkling nearly call too soon, and why was waiting better?" Then a second one: "Is there anything you have that you're not using yet?"

One thing to do at the table. You need a chessboard (or squared paper and coins). Set up the position after Black's twelfth move, which is printed on the score sheet at the end of the book. Play the last five moves together. Your child takes Morphy's side. Before each move, the child says which character's move it is: Pinwell for a pin, the twins for the rooks, Sidetrack for the queen given away, Kester for the mate.

The grown-up layer. The game is used everywhere to teach development: getting all your pieces working before you attack. The story adds a second idea that is easy to miss, which is timing. A pin, a sacrifice or a claim is only as good as your ability to back it up. The book's Honest Page sorts what is true (every move), what is stretched (which opera it was, still argued about) and what is made up (the academy and its talking pieces). A grown-up version of the same game, with the historical argument in full, is on the Whetstone as "Today's classic".