Roller Coaster Chess

A while ago I drew a comic about playing chess on a roller coaster. Various xkcd readers took up the challenge.

Pictured above: Andrew Burke, Chris Ranker, Ryan DowlingSoka, and Chance Brown.

To see more pictures of chess on rides, go to xkcd.com/chesscoaster. If you think you can do better, go for it, and send the pictures to rmunroe@gmail.com. But remember, I am not advocating doing anything dangerous unless it’s really cool.

95 Responses to “Roller Coaster Chess”

  1. Woelfle says:

    Have you seen that? You’re in a German Internet TV-show called “Ehrensenf” :) http://www.ehrensenf.de/2007/07/24/jackson-im-knast-endlos-klettern-schnee-auto-tee-kunst/?vid=Quicktime

  2. Od says:

    Years ago, my high school friends and i decided it make a good picture it we all looked bored on the roller coaster. the picture is hilarious with the people behind us freaking out and us looking half asleep. more recently, my girlfriend and i thought it would be cute if we were kissing when th picture was taken, the photos cam out well, i’ll have to se about getting them scanned.

  3. Cheshirecat says:

    Hey, I remember reading one of your comics before talking about Jim Davis throwing off his commercial shackles or something to that effect and wondered if you’d seen the October 1989 Garfield comics… http://garfieldisdead.ytmnd.com/ has them and the Wikipedia Garfield entry says more.

    Also, I love these Rollercoaster Chess pictures and can’t wait for more. Hilarious.

  4. Dora says:

    Had your vacation yet?
    How about Dinosaurland?

    looks like fun :D
    http://devilspanties.keenspot.com/dinosaurland07.html

  5. Sriel says:

    …I lose, and I hate you all.

  6. Germika says:

    I’m going to Universal Studios in a couple of weeks. I’m planning on doing this on Jurassic Park.

    It will be epic.

  7. By the way, I dunno if you’ve noticed yet but the Irregular Webcomic guy did a parody of xkcd.

  8. Kobra says:

    That’s awesome on so many levels.

  9. Someursault says:

    Oh come on. By now you must know how badly some members of your fandom are going to get hurt trying to skateboard while clutching their PSPs now that you’ve posted this strip. It’s cruelty after a certain point.

  10. Incidentally, regarding ‘the game’ – there’s an obvious and much less boring variant which my friends call “The Pillaging Game”. If you think of it first, you win (and state “IJ W T Pillaging Game”). If you hear someone win, you’re pillaged and lose. (and state “IJ L TPG”).

    Further, regarding this spam protection, it stumped me for a good half hour once, until I realised that “Sum of 3+7″ was not looking for the perfectly valid answer “3+7″.

  11. Floyd Bullard says:

    This is great. But now it’s made me want to see bughouse. Random complaint: how long has it been since you could watch TV without the lower-right 5% of the screen occupied by the station’s logo? I watch PBS almost exclusively to escape ad bombardment in my home, and even they do this.

  12. velo says:

    In regards to the lisp comic (which is hilarious) isnt it “_from_ a more.. civilized age” ?

  13. Sean Long says:

    Fantastic stuff. I am announcing my intention: I am getting my open water scuba certification, and a large reason for this is to take a chess board down to 100 feet.

  14. Drew says:

    MIT totally hasn’t deconstructed the computer science program. Sure, it doesn’t require you to learn Scheme anymore, but who’s missing Scheme?

    (I took the class…great for theory, but I wanted to kill Scheme so much by the end of it. Object-Oriented for the win.)

  15. Sean says:

    See, i knew that bit about science being nonsense… My religious studies teacher told me.

  16. Priyanka says:

    here i am, an active math-hater but maniacal stick-figure-drawer, compulsively hooked on to your webcomic. i’ve been reaidng it for a while, only i was a little nervous about commenting.
    it’s a great comic, this is a great blag, and thanks for making me laugh a lot.. even though i only get about two-thirds of it.

  17. DoubleJay says:

    After seeing the Tesla Coil comic, I couldn’t resist posting this link:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ff_AXVlo9U

    Its a video of the “Singing” Tesla Coil at Duckon 2007. Not sure how, but they found a way to modulate the pitch in order to play simple midi songs on the coil.

  18. Zephyr says:

    Awesome

    I would pay money to know what went through the heads of the folks at the photobooth when they saw this come through.

  19. Lisa says:

    oh, what i wouldn’t give to have friends who understand why this is so awesome. none of them believe me.

  20. Decadence says:

    Waste of glue…

  21. j3rmz0r says:

    I wasn’t paying much attention, but then like the third time i looked across this blag, i noticed Chris Ranker’s name.. I just got done working with this guy for a couple months and found it quite odd that this picture (which is THE BEST of the coaster pics!) was on here and that he was in it. Rock on guys.

  22. Nate Jellis says:

    Hey, I’m the one who was on the Loch Ness coaster. It occured to me that this video might be of interest:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4FAh5sytt8

  23. Scott says:

    Wow. Happy #300 :-)

  24. Claire says:

    That picture is noice (Australian for “nice”).

  25. eXtreme Knowledge Comically Distributed ?

    http://xkcd.com/
    Source: *shrug*
    What is it: I’ll just cite the tagline: “A Webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language”. Very often Randall Munroe simply hits right on the mark with a witty remark, a funny line, or the “a…

  26. Cid says:

    XDDD

    CHINGÓN!!

    F*ckin AWSOME! someone do it!
    how can you get that board inside?? brilliant!

  27. Tony says:

    On a random note:
    I never realized these blags existed until last night.
    Or more specifically: Until four this morning.

    It’s a whole new world behind xkcd.

    As for the topic at hand:
    If astroworld was still around, they’d never see me coming!

    As it is, I’ll probably go to Fiesta Texas and do it.
    Maybe with a glued together Jenga set?

  28. Katie says:

    Apparently the creators of the Bunny comic have taken a liking to this particular idea. That makes me ridiculously happy.

  29. [...] includes in his webcomic come true. Sometimes it’s out of his control, and just due to readers gettin’ creative. Sometimes Munroe nudges it along. Truly, I’m hard-pressed to think of any better use of the [...]

  30. blog says:

    greatings…

    Agree…

  31. [...] for more info on Wet Riffs, and of course the Stallman issue and The Meet Up but it’s the roller coaster chess ride that really did it for [...]

  32. greg says:

    lol that’s funny

  33. Uncensored Paris Hilton sex tape…

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  34. UKnow says:

    Thats not real!!!!

  35. Brent Crouch says:

    Great picture. Me and my daughter Jillian just got back from Dollywood on Sunday. There is a new ride called Mystery Mine. Take a look at the picture in my post and tell me if you can play chest on that thing!

  36. Laurie Bruns says:

    I’d like to see them play Operation.

  37. Youtube says:

    Recently leaked footage of the new Paris Hilton sex tape…

  38. Muzik Dinle says:

    THANKS , I LOVED ONE VERY BEATIFULL COKKS very nice

  39. video says:

    I was playing around with the audio feature.

    And instead of saying “I am” it says “I A-M”.

    It made me giggle.

  40. play free action adventure game…

    New York is well- ……

  41. TN says:

    I’m thinking of trying this with Risk.

  42. sqrt(-1) says:

    I’m thinking of trying this with Risk.

  43. Richard says:

    Take it a step up: I would love to see a photo of a pair playing chess while skydiving.

  44. Ian says:

    yeah i know, zombie reply. but me and my physics class are heading to Cedar Point tuesday for a field trip, i’m gonna get one taken on Millenium force and *try* for topthrill dragster which i believe is still the tallest/fastest on the planet.

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