Media comments on chess

[Angus French]

Also, is it really Chess Competition 1066?

[Stewart Reuben]

Angus. For some years it has been showing a number reaching each week to 1066 today. I assumed it is correct. I don't know when the Sunday Times started their numbering system. I do know I started numbering the competition when entering in September 2011. That was 769. That comes from my list of past emails stored by aol. I started doing so when the Sunday Times wrote to me, and others, requesting we include te number in the subject headline.
I have only won once and never won the equivalent Times competition. I have lost count of the number of times I have won The Spectator one.

[Stewart Reuben]

I was half-watching the introduction to the French Open tennis final on ITV between Nadal and Wawrinka.
One of the commentators said something like 'They are moving chess pieces around the court'.

[David Robertson]

"Bauernopfer"

A tweet from Martin Selmayr, Juncker's chief of staff, mocking Theresa May after her two senior aides, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, resigned. (Times)

[Geoff Chandler]

Friday, June 9th. Metro cryptic crossword.

14 Across:

'A mate for him would mean the end!' (5,6)

Been bugging me all weekend. "I should know this?"

Got the solution in today's Metro. 'Chess Player.'

I thought it was Bobby Fischer (if you write small you can get 'Fischer' to fit into the 6 boxes.)

[Brian Towers]

Backbench Tory MP looking at a picture of "Showgirls playing chess" in Parliament this afternoon - https://order-order.com/2017/06/13/tory ... ne-screen/ . Anna Soubry checking that the board was set up right.

[Ian Thompson]

A chess question on today's "Impossible" TV game show - "At the start of a game of chess which piece is between the rook and the knight?" The contestant got the answer wrong.

[Barry Sandercock]

I'm not surprised he got it wrong. A confusing question to a non-player.

[Simon Brown]

I've only seen that show once (which was enough) but if I recall you get extra marks for spotting the "Impossible" question, hence the title.

[John Clarke]

A chess question on today's "Impossible" TV game show - "At the start of a game of chess which piece is between the rook and the knight?" The contestant got the answer wrong.

Not a very well-worded question at all. Which rook and which knight? Are they even necessarily the same colour?

In the same class as "Who was killed on 22 November 1963?" The name of any of the dozens who died in car crashes that day would be just as correct an answer as "President Kennedy".

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Not a very well-worded question at all."

Not an uncommon problem with TV quiz shows!

[Geoff Chandler]

Correct Kevin,

Even if the question was who was shot by Harvey Oswald on that day a perfectly valid
answer would have been the police officer Tippit.

[Chris Rice]

Correct Kevin,

Even if the question was who was shot by Harvey Oswald on that day a perfectly valid
answer would have been the police officer Tippit.

Which would have been met by the response "I am so sorry Geoff, the answer we were looking for was JFK" (cut to commercial and remove contestant from building).

[Stewart Reuben]

A question compiling company once contacted me. They wanted advice on the answer to 'Who is the World Chess champion?' At that time, the answer could have been Karpov or Kasparov. So i told them not to use the question.
I then suggested, 'How many squares are there on a draughtsboard. He sai 64. I pointed out, no 32. He suggested they would change the question to,
'How many squares are used on a draughtsboard.
It is ver difficult to prepare the exact wording of a question.

[Stewart Reuben]

Today's Daily Telegraph. In a political column by Charles Morre he refers to 'zugswang'. He defined it correctly in terms of chess.
He suggests that some think the government is facing 'a zugswang'. Things can only get worse whatever they doand there i no option of doing nohing. He shows that this isn't correct.
I had high hopes he would describe a siuation where somebody was in zugswang, apart from sports such as chess, draughts or bridge (where it is called 'throwing your opponents in). I even have a work of fiction called 'Zugswang'. But the situation the chief protagonist found himself in was nothng of the sort. It was the more common one of there being no good move, including doing nothing.

So i am still looking fo a real-life situation where zugswang occurs. Any suggestions?