"Part of my charm." Sly amusement turns wistful, for a moment, as he thinks of paper crowns and Christmas crackers, but then he accepts his present and -

Oh. Oh, he looks utterly delighted as he runs his hands along the boards, far more than he would be at a standard set.

"I've played three-dimensional chess, but it didn't look quite like this." He means the basic design, but it didn't have silicon blobs either.