English Chess Forum

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:04 am

John Moore wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 24, 2020 6:40 pm

My guess then is that the second part is from a book.

Well, it's from New in Chess.

The answer is that Spassky shook many hands that tournament after it was rumoured it could improve your game if you shook his hand, so many people wanted to.

But did it improve Spassky's game?

Probably improves his mood but not sure about his game, I think he drew a lot of games that time.

Which world championship match had the largest animals in it? Pluralized, as was the case in the match, their spelling changes slightly.

Spassky-Petrosian 1966?

Spassky employed a couple of hippopotamuses, as I recall.

The pieces we call bishops were originally elephants. So if there'd been world championship matches in the early days of chess, any of those.

You do have a point there, I should have refined the question to that of Official World Championship Matches. It isn't really understood by linguists why the noun classification for animals is unique in our language, such as a school of fish or flock of birds. The general consensus being there's no rhyme or reason to it. David Crystal argues that a bunch of monks in St.Albans are responsible for that and turned the whole thing into a sort of game. Not sure what the collective noun for a group of hippopotami is but most likely something invented off the cuff in the spirit of the evenings festivities.

Not quite sure why he employed that twice in the same match, was he just trying to outfox Petrosian?

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 15, 2020 3:12 am

a bunch of monks

Didn't know that one.

NickFaulks wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 15, 2020 6:48 am

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 15, 2020 3:12 am

a bunch of monks

Didn't know that one.

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 15, 2020 3:12 am

Not sure what the collective noun for a group of hippopotami is

A bloat

Mick Norris wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 15, 2020 8:50 am

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 15, 2020 3:12 am

Not sure what the collective noun for a group of hippopotami is

A bloat

crash, bloat, herd, pod or dale

Perhaps so, after all, a 14th century St.Albans probably differed very little from the African continent as a whole...except in size maybe.. David Crystal tends to be correct about most things so he may be right about the point made.

What's the highest recorder number of castling manoeuvres in one game. Hint: it's more than two.

Probably 3 and it's probably an Irish game Kerins - Heidenfeld - unless there is a more recent version.

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 16, 2020 3:26 pm

What's the highest recorder number of castling manoeuvres in one game. Hint: it's more than two.

The standard place to look for these "curiosities" is

https://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/records/records.htm

You could also look in the book that EGW was not too keen on :

Ah I see that Heidenfeld was White but at least I got the right game.