The Lime Belt is that neon-green beauty that everyone wants. Acquire it simply by dropping a skewer on your opponent and then raising your hand high and calling "Referee!" Ask Coach if you earned a Lime Belt for doing a skewer!

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A skewer is a chess tactic in which you move a piece to attack your opponent's queen, and that queen cannot stop the attack because behind the queen sits the king. So a skewer is simply when you pin a queen and then gain that queen due to the pin. A skewer is kind of the opposite of an X-Ray, which is when you attack the king and it moves and you gobble what is behind. In a skewer, the queen is in front, resulting in the loss of the queen. Here is an example:

When the bishop moves to the red square, the queen is skewered. All black can do is capture the bishop, and have its own queen captured by the white knight. The rest is almost automatic: the king escorts the remaining pawn to the other end of the board, that pawn promotes to queen, and the checkmate comes very soon thereafter.

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On the chessboard below, can you spot the best move for white? Hint: it involves a skewer!

Yep. As the chessboard below illustrates, when white moves to the yellow square it sorely tempts black to capture the black rook on the yellow square. But watch out! This causes a skewer! If the queen falls for this tactic and captures the rook, the game is over. Then white slides its bishop to the red square, at which time, blamo! The black queen is skewered, and can only helplessly capture the bishop, get captured by the white king, and watch as the white pawn is escorted up the board by the white king to inevitably promote to queen in a few moves. Skewers are terrific!

So skewering is a mighty tactic, and executing one earns you an eye-catching Lime Belt!