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Alice in Wonderland Day
“Now, here, you see,” says the Red Queen, “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
~ Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll, 1871
Happy Alice in Wonderland Day! Today marks the anniversary of the "golden afternoon" in 1862 when Charles Lutwidge Dodgson—better known to the world as Lewis Carroll—first shared his whimsical tale with 10-year-old Alice Liddell, the curious middle daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. That enchanting riverbank storytelling session gave rise to the beloved classics Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871).
While Wonderland follows a dreamlike descent into absurdity, Through the Looking-Glass is something more structured—a hidden, playable, and delightfully peculiar game of chess! The story is mapped onto an actual chessboard layout, with each character and movement reflecting the rules and logic of the game. Among them is the imperious Red Queen, a sharp-tongued, bossy figure obsessed with arbitrary etiquette. She represents the red queen chess piece and convinces Alice to join the match as a humble pawn for the White Queen.
As Alice makes her way across the board, square by square, readers witness a fantastical journey filled with puzzles, poetry, and transformation. Each step Alice takes through Looking-Glass Land mirrors a legal chess move, culminating in her promotion to Queen. This unique structure inspired the creation of a chess variant in 1953 aptly named Alice Chess. In this game, two boards—A and B—are used instead of one. After every move, the piece is "transported" through the looking glass from one board to the other, much like Alice’s leap into the mirrored world.
This tartan, with its commanding red and black grid, echoes the Red Queen's presence and mirrors the structured paths of a chessboard—visually embodying Alice’s journey across the squares of Looking-Glass Land.
Curiouser and curiouser, indeed! Fancy a game of chess—or a spot of tea—this afternoon in celebration? ❤️ 🖤 ❤️ 🐇☕️🎩🍰🃏🪄🫖🐁🍄💐⏱️🐈⬛🔮
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (also known as Alice Through the Looking-Glass or simply Through the Looking-Glass) is a novel published on 27 December 1871 by Lewis Carroll, a mathematics professor at the University of Oxford, and is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).
Alice again enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond it. There she finds that, just like a reflection, everything is reversed, including logic (for example, running helps one remain stationary, walking away from something brings one towards it, chessmen are alive, nursery rhyme characters exist, and so on).
Through the Looking-Glass includes such well-known verses as "Jabberwocky" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter", and the episode involving Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
The mirror above the fireplace that is displayed at Hetton Lawn in Charlton Kings, Gloucestershire (a house that was owned by Alice Liddell's grandparents, and was regularly visited by Alice and Lewis Carroll) resembles the one drawn by John Tenniel and is cited as a possible inspiration for Carroll.
For more on the Alice Chess variant, click Alice and the Red Queen.