Chess, from beginning to end, is a game of patterns. Steven Pinker, in The Blank Slate, writes that chess grandmasters are no better than non-players at remembering randomly arranged chess pieces. They rather remember the patterns of threats, attacks, defenses.

Patterns are the stock and trade of autism. Arranging, rearranging, obsessing with shapes.

At school I’ve been finding that chess is in fact an excellent activity for children the higher functioning spectrum of autism. During their choice time, several kids have taken to playing chess, taught primarily by yours truly. Elementary chess; chess without much “strategy”; with some kids, chess without all the pieces (minimizing input and thereby confusion) — still, chess all the same.

Today, much to my surprise, one of the children with more intrusive autism (read: closer to low-functioning than most of the other children) decided he wanted play with the chess pieces during his choice time. He knew that they go one to a square, and he’d even picked up from watching the other kids play during the last few weeks that all the pawns go in front of all the major pieces. Once he’d got them all situated, I asked him if he’d like me to show him how the back pieces were to be arranged. He readily agreed, and I showed him: castles (using “rook,” “knight,” etc. was a level of abstraction that I decided was unnecessary) go on the outside; the horses go next, because they’re riding out of the castles; next we have these tall, funny, pointy looking pieces; and then the king and queen. I tried to get him to turn the board around and set up the white pieces, using the black pieces as a model. Nothing going there, and I simply backed off. I returned in a few minutes to find that he’d done it himself.

Impressive.

But more was to come.

Another young lad decided to join in the fun, and the two were soon having a blast simply moving the pieces around randomly, taking with rooks by jumping three pieces at a diagonal, but still obviously grasping the object of the game.

And then the real shock – the first boy put all the pieces back perfectly and they played again.

Once choice was over, I used the chess pieces and board with the first boy to segue into math, working on which numbers are bigger. Instead of using the workbook and coloring in blocks of a chart to give a visual for the young lad, we used the chess board. Once he’d arranged the correct number of pieces on the board, he then colored in the squares in his workbook, and we had a short little quiz.

“Which number is bigger: six or eight?” A quick to the chess board or the workbook gave him the necessary help when he wasn’t sure. By the time we got to ten (I added two squares on a piece of paper, since a chess board is only eight by eight), he was carefully arranging the pieces by alternating color and size.

And we continued working, without a glitch, even when the rest of the class left for the library.