the nearest square off the lines, over pieces, and four moves to the square next door
Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.
Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.
The moves are FIDE Laws of Chess in force from 1 January 2023, article 3. Square counts are walked, not quoted.
From a1 to b2 is one diagonal step, and a bishop makes it in a single move. A knight needs four: none of its squares lies on the lines, so what is nearest to it is never what is quickest for it. The number is found by walking the board, not quoted.
The reason is the same one that gives the knight its single advantage. It moves where the queen cannot reach from the same square — and so on every one of the sixty-four squares of the board. Between the square it leaves and the square it arrives on there is no intervening square at all; and so there is no piece that could stand in the way.
A third property can be read straight off the board: every leap changes the colour of the square. A knight standing on a dark square will be on a light one after its next move and on a dark one again after that. A square of the same colour can therefore be reached only in an even number of moves, and one of the other colour only in an odd number.
Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 7 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.
four FIBA sizes with their circumference and mass — and why the rules set a bounce, not a pressure
Law 2, three codes of the game, five sizes and three FIFA quality marks — what a ball must survive
eleven sports at true relative size — circumference, mass, pressure, and who sets them
a diagonal at any distance — and the half of the board that will never come