file, rank and diagonal together — from twenty-one squares to twenty-seven
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 move: FIDE Laws of Chess, article 3 (in force 2023). The piece: FIDE Handbook C.02, 6.2–6.3 (in force 2026).
The queen moves along the file, the rank and the diagonal — that is, exactly where the rook and the bishop move. She has not a single square of her own: on each of the sixty-four squares of the board her squares are those two put together, with nothing left over on either side. That can be checked by walking the board, and here it is checked that way.
Hence the numbers. In a corner the queen holds twenty-one squares — fourteen as a rook and seven as a bishop; in the middle twenty-seven, being fourteen and thirteen. The whole of the difference between corner and centre belongs to the bishop: the part of the move inherited from the rook does not depend on place at all.
The same arithmetic explains why a queen in the centre is reckoned to be worth noticeably more than a queen on the rim, while nobody says the same of a rook. The bishop half of the move loses nearly half its squares in a corner, and the rook half loses nothing.
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