Do you play Chess? Become part of an important research project at Sol.

We are helping a team of students at the National Council of Arts (NCA) carry out an important piece of research involving an experimental chess set.

We play chess with our eyes. What if we played with our noses instead?

For their thesis, the team has developed an experimental chess board consisting of pieces that cannot be distinguished by appearance; they can only be identified by smell.

This might sound confusing, but here’s the interesting part:

Parts of our brain involved in developing strategies are linked strongly to the part of our brain responsible for vision.

Consider why Beth Harmon from the Queen’s Gambit “sees” chess pieces moving around on the ceiling when she’s strategizing and calculating possible outcomes for each move. What if we taught Beth Harmon to “smell” pieces instead of “seeing” them. How would that affect the neuronal architecture of her brain, and the associations between its various parts? Instead of vision, can the ‘strategizing’ or ‘problem-solving’ centers of our brain, re-associate itself with the center for smell (or “olfaction”)?

Cafe Sol, which proudly hosts some of the best chess and most ambitious chess players in the twin cities, is pleased to participate in this study. We just need more volunteers to play this fun, experimental chess with us.

If you’re interested, please let us know!

For science!