(Author here)

Sorry guys, it appears the traffic accidentally caused my balance to go too negative and my account got suspended! D'oit! Fixed now!

so great! can you open source the erlang part?

EDIT - sorry just found the link at the bottom - www.github.com/twilio/chessms

Deadbeat!

    &\&^&]&[&Z&]&^&\ 
    &_&_&_&_&_&_&_&_ 
      %?  %?  %?  %? 
    %?  %?  %?  %? 
      %?  %?  %?  %? 
    %?  %?  %?  %? 
    &Y&Y&Y&Y&Y&Y&Y&Y 
    &V&X&W&U&T&W&X&V

This is what I get.

ah! I'm guessing you're on Sprint/Virgin/Boost.

Sorry... there's literally nothing I can do to fix that. Sprint simply just doesn't support non-GSM characters. You can send from AT&T to Sprint and see for yourself :(

If you're not on Sprint, send me a message at chad át Twilio.com and give me some more details.

Yes, it is Sprint :(

For those who want the TLDR:

> You can play ChesSMS by texting "PLAY" to +1 (415) 494-8454.

Working with SMS is a very interesting space because of the limitations of the protocol.

good summary, though I would claim another takeaway from this is that SMS is also more capable than most people realize.

This is pretty cool and clever too. I'd like to see more SMS games!

The SMS interface appears to already be overloaded. (FYI, standard phone numbers can send a maximum of 1 SMS a second, this limit is enforced by the carriers and applies to everyone even Twillio)

What you say about rate limiting is true, but actually you weren't getting responses because my account was suspended for about 15 minutes.

I don't think even the frontpage of HN would be capable of getting enough chess players for 1 msg/sec to be too slow.

This is the work of a true hacker! Every programmer should have the attitude to look beyond the obstacles and strive to find solutions to the problems that they face.

I sent an SMS to play but haven't received a response yet. Can it be played by people from outside the USA?

It should! Is your carrier listed on http://www.twilio.com/sms/pricing ? If it is, send me an email, chad ät twilio.com

Such a great use of SMS. Brilliant article too. Really enjoyed reading through your thought process.

+1 i've been a messaging sms/mms core network architect for many years (for a uk operator), was a good read! nice work chad!

That is some fancy stuff.

This is so awesome

chad: gsm 03.42 might aid your final problem :)

very interesting. My understanding was that most handsets didn't implement compression but I think it's worth a try.