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Try and Wrap Your Brain Around This Functional Chess Globe

Try and Wrap Your Brain Around This Functional Chess Globe

Chessglobe? Chessphere? Chorb? Well, whatever you call it, it’s certainly not a “chess board,” since this beautiful work of art brings the game out of the confines of its usual flatter dimensions.

This mind-melting game spheroid made from walnut, soft maple and jatoba wood was created by Ben Myers and brought to our attention via a recent post on Laughing Squid. The game of chess is literally brought to new dimensions by magnets embedded under each game “square” and a beautifully crafted base that allows the globe to rotate. Oh, and did we mention the oddly satisfying globe-spinning clicks? No? Well, hold onto your butts!

And if being excited over playing chess in an entirely new shape wasn’t nerdy enough, we can’t help but think how well this thing is designed. Specifically with how the shape of a normal chessboard was re-tooled to–more or less–properly fit on a 3D solid. If you think about a normal flat chess board like a Cartesian map with an equidistant grid system, in order to fit it on a globe you’d have to (much like regular maps and globes) stretch or shrink some of the pieces in order to allow everything to fit.

Though, despite our love of chess and gaming in general, we can’t help but think playing it around a globe adds a whole new level of headache-inducing squirreliness. Keeping track of pieces on a board is hard enough without having to think in every direction.

What are your thoughts on this chess globe? Cool item to have in your home or coolest item to have in your home? Let’s discuss in the comments below!

Image: Ben Myers

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