Yesterday, the Josh & Archie YouTube channel answered a question that has somehow been on the internet's mind for over a year: Yes, you can, in fact, use anal beads to cheat at chess.

It has been 14 months since Hans Niemann defeated Magnus Carlsen in a chess match that shocked the world and prompted a scandal that has been consistently haunted by the specter of robotic vibrators that go up one's butt.

Carlsen heavily implied he believed Niemann was cheating in the match, but did not specify how, nor could anyone following the drama guess how it could be done since security was tight at their match in St. Louis.

A gag post on Reddit shortly after offered a silly theory that Niemann had somehow snuck a device connected to a chess algorithm into his butt that would vibrate in order to inform him of the best move to make against Carlsen. The sheer ludicrousness of the idea had the chess world, which had no plausible theories to imagine how Niemann could have cheated, joking about using anal beads to cheat for months.

It turns out, according to Josh & Archie, that this is totally plausible. To prove this, Josh inserted an electronic butt plug and sat in front of grandmaster Daniel Fernandez, ranked 481st in the world, who believed he was appearing in a video testing a hypothesis of if someone could master a skill in three months.

Archie had a computer open to a chess app and played Fernandez's moves, then communicated the computer's responses to Joe via smartphone. Josh was able to "win" the match via this method after Fernandez made a small mistake.

Though Carlsen and Niemann have officially (if icily) resolved their differences and Carlsen has retracted any insinuation of foul play, the "anal beads" question still hangs over Niemann, who was asked about it by Piers Morgan last month, and coyly answered the question with, "Your curiosity is a bit concerning, you know — maybe you’re personally interested, but I can tell you, no."

Last year Chess Grandmaster and world number 1 Magnus Carlson accused Hans Niemann of using Anal beads to beat him. We wanted to see if this was possible… pic.twitter.com/hikppm2660

— Josh Pieters (@joshua_pieters) November 13, 2023