Media comments on chess

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Slough sixth former describes life taking 28 A-Levels

Mahnoor Cheema, from Slough [...] [the] 17-year-old [...] is at college after taking 34 GCSEs.

Among the extra A-levels Mahnoor is taking are two maths courses, three languages, three variations of history, economics, business, computer science and film studies.

She said: "My parents have always made sure I'm not so academically focussed that that I forget to have a social life and extra curriculars. So I play the piano, I do chess, I do swimming, I go out with my friends.

[...]

"My mum invested in a lot of brain building activities when I was young, like arithmetic, chess, classical music. Mum really is a role model and inspiration for me."

[Roland Kensdale]

The Chase 23rd Jan, available on the player:

How many chess pieces can capture one square diagonally?

2. 3 or 4

Quick!

[Ian Thompson]

How many chess pieces can capture one square diagonally?

Poor question. Are pawns considered to be pieces or not?

[Rich Wiltshir]

24
16 pawns
4 bishops
2 queens
2 kings

[Roland Kensdale]

How many chess pieces can capture one square diagonally?

Poor question. Are pawns considered to be pieces or not?

Good point

[Geoff Chandler]

Reminds me of trick question I mentioned the other day.

Q. Which piece moves one square at a time but on it's first move can move two squares?

A. The King.

[Roland Kensdale]

How many chess pieces can capture one square diagonally?

Poor question. Are pawns considered to be pieces or not?

Went back to check wording in programme: ' How many different chess pieces can capture by moving one square diagonally'. Ian's point still applies.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I cannot remember if we have a thread for literary allusions to chess, but in case it is of interest, I happened to be looking through Volume 2 of the 1817 satirical work 'Melincourt' by Thomas Peacock (as you do), and I noticed Chapter XXVII "The Chess Dance" (from page 200 onwards):

https://archive.org/details/melincourt0 ... 0/mode/2up

I will leave it to the literati to see how much chess content there actually is...

[Roland Kensdale]

'The Commons needed to focus on the horror in Gaza. Instead this was a grubby game of political chess.'

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... dsay-hoyle

(Actually a clear explanation of what happened on Wednesday).

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I cannot remember if we have a thread for literary allusions to chess, but in case it is of interest, I happened to be looking through Volume 2 of the 1817 satirical work 'Melincourt' by Thomas Peacock (as you do), and I noticed Chapter XXVII "The Chess Dance" (from page 200 onwards):

https://archive.org/details/melincourt0 ... 0/mode/2up

I will leave it to the literati to see how much chess content there actually is...

I have now actually read through the Peacock chapter, and it is an interesting example of 'live' chess, which makes me wonder if the year (1817) was actually early enough to make this one of the earliest examples of this sort of thing? There are even the first few moves of a game (but no more than that). It is difficult to know quite what to make of it.

While trying to see if anyone else had noticed and commented on this before, I came across something else completely different, a poem by the US poet Jean Garrigue (1912-1972):

The Chess Dance

That edition/version was published in September 1957, and includes of a number of rather abstract (but almost recognisable) chess references, mainly it seems to me, the angst of playing chess. Makes me wonder if she played chess or was just observing its effect in others.

14 stanzas (roughly, depending on the page breaks) across 4 pages (pp.337-340 of Volume 90, Number 6, September 1957, of the monthly publication 'Poetry').

Would genuinely be interested in what people think of it (she is described by some as a 'difficult' poet to read). I suspect (though have not looked for any reviews or analysis of the poem) that she is actually describing something else, and using the rather thin veneer of pseudo-chess elements as some sort of metaphor or other poetic allusion, though it is beyond me to quite work out exactly what she is trying to say.

The stanza that seems most apt is this one (though it is not easy reading):

Lured by the look of the game each gives
Till heart in mouth, it seems one comes
In the time of the nightingales
With expressly the one step it was known
Would come from the Golden Isles
For which what wouldn't be done to leap
Out of the skin to leap out of the dance
Past the cruel master of chance.

[Also suspect these literary references are a bit lost in this thread, may try to start a new thread later if time.]

[Paul McKeown]

"Qh4" was the answer to the sequence f3, e5, g4 in "Only Connect." The clues and the answer being the sequence of moves in a Fool's Mate, which according to Victoria Coren is a "mate in four moves."

[Mick Norris]

It's an old episode, the winners of series 3 v the winners of series 4, with Jenny from the Chase

Chess openings were on Pointless earlier this evening

[NickFaulks]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/0 ... n=DM287520

Not the most gripping story of the day, but read the final sentence. I hope her book comes to fruition.

For anyone paywalled,

"She is also a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford’s history faculty and is writing a book about chess in the Middle Ages".

[NickFaulks]

https://www.thearticle.com/unseen-blush ... sity-match

I'm not sure how I came to read this rather disjointed RDK piece, perhaps the result of a search for "Varsity Match".

Anyway, he makes the passing comment that Tigran Petrosian was Jewish. It hardly matters, but I don't recall that being mentioned before.

[Gerard Killoran]

Anyway, he makes the passing comment that Tigran Petrosian was Jewish. It hardly matters, but I don't recall that being mentioned before.

Probably because it isn't true. His wife was Jewish however.