Clued by "scholar" and "mate" in the flavortext, answer words start with the letters representing the pieces involved in the Scholar's Mate.
The distances moved by the pieces are used to index into each answer word to spell the answer.
- POWDER PUFF
- QUITE NICE
- BROWN NUMBERS
- QWERTY
Note: The last move of the Scholar's Mate actually has length 2. Despite this, the third letter of QWERTY is extracted.