Checkerboard
A checkerboard (or chequerboard) is a board on which American checkers/English draughts is played. It is an 8×8 board and the 64 squares are of alternating dark and light color, often red and black.
The term checkerboard is also used to denote any rectangular square-tiled board. In this sense it refers not to a physical board as such but to the mathematical abstraction of such a board. The adjective checkered may refer to a pattern resembling a checkerboard, as in the checkered flag used to welcome the winning cars in a Formula One race, for instance, or the livery on some emergency service vehicles.
An 8×8 board is also used for some other board games, although not necessarily a board with an alternating pattern:
- Chess
- Makruk
- Arimaa
- Amazons
- Mak-yek
- Breakthrough
- Crossings
- Gounki
- Lines of Action
- Martian Chess
- Reversi
- Chapayev
A checkerboard marking painted on a hilltop was used as visual guidance on Hongkong's old Kai Tak Airport.
Many taxicabs also use a checkerboard pattern.