It's 11th Dimensional

Chess is played on an 8x8 two dimensional board. In the original Star Trek they famously played three dimensional chess on three boards at once with a few smaller posts that moved around (though there were real 3D variations in the early 1900s). Lately in political discussions I've seen talk of 11th dimensional chess, referring to political strategies that are thinking many moves ahead (which doesn't require extra dimensions). I wasn't sure if it was an 11th or 12th or some other dimensional game. To the Google!

I googled four variations of 14 dimensions of chess. That is for example the phrases: "4 dimensional chess", "4th dimensional chess", "four dimensional chess" and "fourth dimensional chess". The answers surprised me a little:



So the political discussion was about 11th (or eleven) dimensional chess. There's a little 12 dimensional one upmanship but it's mostly 11th. In fact there's more 11th than two which I guess makes sense because you don't often have to mention that chess is in two dimensions. I figured that three dimensions would have a good representation on the Internet, there are a lot of Star Trek fans. I'm surprised that 4 dimensional chess was the big winner. Looking through the first few pages of results it really is about figuring out a playable game and not merely a metaphor for something. Some results are for a 3 dimensional game where I suspect at the end of the page they postulate about extending it to four dimensions.

For those interested in the data: