English Chess Forum

Readers might be amused by the following letter in the Daily Telegraph on 6th October from Jim Adams of Worcester Park.

"In 1942, I played chess by correspondence against a purser in the Navy whole letters were censored. One day, I got proof that the censor took more than just a passing interest: written under my latest move was "Why not 14 e5?", signed by "Censor".
It indicated that the official was conscientious enough to play the game through to make sure it was a bona fide chess match.
One hopes the same would happen today."

I'd have thought it more likely that the censor found his job boring and the opportunity to kibitz made for a bit of a diversion! Even if the messages did consist of genuine chess moves, there's no reason why they couldn't also have had some second meaning - that's if Korchnoi's "message in a yoghurt pot" conspiracy theory is anything to go by.

Funnily enough after posting this I went to the Streatham and Brixton blog and there found the Daily Telegraph letter had also hit the headlines. There were some amusing comments to the effect that it was surprising that the censor had used algebraic notation (this was 1942 after all) and that perhaps the censor was really a German spy who had presumably slipped up by lapsing into his native algebraic rather than good old English descriptive, rather in the manner of the German spies in wartime films who give themselves away by their careless mispronunciation of English place names. Another blogger expressed surprise that the Telegraph even allowed algebraic notation to be used in its pages (though of course Malcolm Pein's estimable column has always been in algebraic.)

Interesting point, that hadn't occurred to me. I learnt chess in the mid 1990s, and the only book I ever read that used descriptive notation was D. Brine Pritchard's The Right Way to Play Chess. I can't remember the year of publication, but judging from the condition of the book when I was reading it, it can't have been very recent!