Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?

I'm the developer of rdx, a mildly popular ad-free, privacy and user friendly Reddit client. This time, I made something for a very specific use case: solving chess puzzles with no internet.

Why? Well, my Wi-Fi is terrible in the bathroom—and that's where I do some of my best thinking. I tried printing out “mate in X” puzzles to solve offline, but they weren’t fun without interaction. So I built OffChess.

OffChess is an iPhone/Android app that contains over 100,000 chess puzzles, fully offline and completely ad-free. You can solve puzzles by category (Mate in 1/2/3/4/5, tactics like pins/forks/skewers, or openings like Sicilian/French, etc). You gain or lose points based on how you perform, so there's a light rating system to keep things engaging.

No accounts, no tracking, no monthly subscriptions, no internet required. Just pure, old-school tactical chess training, wherever you are.

You can check out the iPhone/iPad app at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chess-puzzles-offchess/id67447... or the Android app at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.offchess

Would love feedback, bug reports, or suggestions.

Thanks!

Comments (19)

laurentlb · 7m ago

Nice project!

As it was not clear from the description, there's a one-time payment (4.29€) to get more than 7 puzzles in a day.

Lichess also offers a good alternative to this, although their offline support is limited.

tangoalpha · 3m ago

Nice app. Using moto edge 60 pro. The app navigation gets hidden under the phone navigation icons. I'd like to pay. Except without user login, I am unable to figure out if the purchase can be linkedin to my 2-3 devices (each of which may use a different Google account)

stavros · 29m ago

This is a nice app, but I have one bug report: When I tap on a piece, and it can capture another piece, it looks like it just can't move that way. Capturable pieces should have their background change somehow, to indicate that I can capture them.

avadhesh18 · 1m ago

Yeah, that’s more me being lazy than an actual bug. I left it like that assuming most people would figure it out anyway — but you’re right, it’s bad design. I’ll add a border around the "capturable" pieces.

Upvoter33 · 9m ago

That’s more of a feature request not a bug report

mhitza · 37m ago

I have TacticMaster (available on F-droid) but your app looks more polished and will have to give it a try as well.

bambax · 19m ago

Very nice! but why not a webapp as well (for those of us who seldom use their phone and can get bored at the office)?

rprouse · 38m ago

The app is full screen on my Samsung mobile so your bottom navigation is underneath the onscreen Android navigation and unusable. Happy to submit an issue and screenshots if you have a GitHub repo.

Other than that, it is working nicely so far.

avadhesh18 · 6m ago

I'm really sorry about your experience. Could you please let me know your device name and screen size? I will make sure to fix this, along with any other bugs people report here and push an update to the app stores by tonight.

stavros · 30m ago

Same here, there's some text at the top that's below my clock and icons:

https://imgz.org/ibGDKfuf/

tajd · 49m ago

This looks really cool! I can't remember what article I was reading the other day but it was advocating for local first software as being the true goal of creating user friendly software -> this app absolutely meet's that goal. Looking forwards to using it.

chatmasta · 41m ago

Awesome. I’ve never understood why Lichess limits the offline download to 50 puzzles.

djexjms · 32m ago

For what it's worth, the entire Lichess corpus of puzzles (over five million positions with solutions and theming tags) is available for download in CSV format at https://database.lichess.org/#puzzles

defrost · 10m ago

Nice. Any retrograde chess puzzles with this?

avadhesh18 · 7m ago

Not yet but interesting idea, I might add these as a category in the future.

eajr · 1h ago

Very cool app. Chess.com costs too much and lichess is rather ugly and has barebones puzzle support. I like how you can choose different categories. Will be using this from now on. Btw you have "Egnlish Opening" misspelled.

avadhesh18 · 9m ago

Thanks for your generous reply and Oh my god how did I miss that, will fix in the next update.

poloniculmov · 15m ago

Try lichess' beta app, it's much more user friendly, even if it's missing a couple of features.

khoury · 40m ago

Very cool looking! Downloaded. What tech did you build it with? :)

Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?

Ask HN: Has anyone else learned English just by reading tech posts (like HN)?

Ask HN: Do you use LLM for HTML translations?

Are there any noteworthy LinkedIn alternatives?

Ask HN: Took a break after burnout – what now?

Ask HN: How is the tech scene in LA?

Ask HN: Any resources for finding non-smart appliances?

N8n AI Workflows – 3,400 Workflows and an LLM Prototype

Ask HN: What's the verdict on GPT wrapper companies these days?

Ask HN: What inspires you to persevere through adversity?

Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

Ask HN: What happened to W3C's PROV initiative to add provenance to the Web?

Ask HN: Brick and Mortar Dev Agency

Which email clients work well with keyboard shortcuts?

Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (July 2025)

Ask HN: Worth leaving position over push to adopt vibe coding?

Ask HN: How do you deal with data backups in servers?

Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2025)

Ask HN: Advice for Starting a Hacker Space?

Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2025)

Ask HN: What's the greatest piece of non-dogfooded software?

Proposal: GUI-first, text-based mechanical CAD inspired by software engineering

Ask HN: What's the 2025 stack for a self-hosted photo library with local AI?

AI Power Internal Tools

Ask HN: How many communities HN it devs in C language?

Ask HN: What old or outdated software have you never found a replacement for?

Ask HN: How do I buy a typewriter?

mTLS vs. HTTP Message Signatures: Tradeoffs in Securing HTTP Requests

Why did not numpy copy the J rank concept?

Ask HN: How to generate product docs E2E?

Paid for Claude Code; can't even sign up because "capacity"

Ask HN: Is there a business for extracting US tech talent?

Super Simple "Hallucination Traps" to detect interview cheaters

Looking for Early Testers for a AI Assistant Inside Zotero

1KB JavaScript Demoscene Challenge Just Launched

ARZY-G: A token born from AI-validated usefulness (not mined, not bought)

Ask HN: MiniNAS Experience

Ask HN: How do you sell to B2B in current state of AI?

Tell HN: A fake, highly obfuscated Solidity VSCode plugin found on marketplace

CellularLab – A Modern Android iPerf3 App with TCP/UDP Testing and AI Analysis

Ask HN: What are the best resources to help with health insurance denials?

If Emacs is not a text editor, then what is it really?

Ask HN: Why there is no demand for my SaaS when competition is killing it?

Ask HN: What clever tools/scripts do you use to manage development environments?

Ask HN: Are there any good WASM-based sites for learning Bash, Linux and CLI?

Ask HN: How commonly is PIP deployed for non performance reasons in FANGs

Ask HN: Requests for Software – have something you want built?

Ask HN: Can't Figure Out Where to Go Next Career Wise

Ask HN: How do companies like OpenAI, Perplexity fine tune rich output?

Ask HN: Ideas to acquire "good taste" in programming?

Show HN: OffChess – 100k+ Offline, Ad-Free Chess Puzzles App

Comments (19)