Rooks and castles

[Joseph Conlon]

I fear the day will come when 'lay' will replace the 'correct' 'lie', as in something laying/lying in the road or someone having a lay-in instead of a lie-in.

So a driver could have a lay-in in a lie-by?

I'll get my coat....

[Paul Habershon]

I fear the day will come when 'lay' will replace the 'correct' 'lie', as in something laying/lying in the road or someone having a lay-in instead of a lie-in.

So a driver could have a lay-in in a lie-by?

I'll get my coat....

No, they use lay for lie, and laid for lay and lain, but not vice-versa.

[Joey Stewart]

To be explicit about the solution for those who have never done crosswords -

Church = CH followed by
EN = 'heart of K(en)t'
which has 'SSMA' ('Mass' arranged, i.e. anagrammatised) inside it, for E(SSMA)N

with the definition 'Castle for one'

apologies to those for whom this is redundant

Thanks for the solution, I think that is the first time I have ever seen a cryptic clue broken down so methodically. Is this an especially hard one being multi layered in such a way?

[Michael Farthing]

Sorry Joey - no. About the level of a knight fork in chess. The secret is in the pattern recognition, but this one consists of long-standing patterns. The compilers specialise in producing more intricate combinations. I got this one immediately and I am actually quite hopeless at cryptics.

[Reg Clucas]

Just before the lockdown an elderly gent visited our club with a view to joining, having not played for many years. He was very puzzled that people were using the word 'Rook'.

[John Clarke]

Does anyone know how English chess terminology settled on 'rook' for the piece and 'castling' for, well, castling?

Good question! "Rook" derives from the old Persian "rukh", meaning a chariot. I've never understood how the word seems to have come from there straight into English. Or for that matter how a chariot (relatively small and mobile) becomes a massive, static fortification in other European languages. (To add to Joseph's confusion: in French, the piece is called a "tour" - a tower - but making the joint move with the king is "roquer"!)

[Roger de Coverly]

(To add to Joseph's confusion: in French, the piece is called a "tour" - a tower - but making the joint move with the king is "roquer"!)

German algebraic has T for a rook. That's short for Turm. Castling is Rochade. The French words are very similar to the German ones.

I had to play a German blind player once in an international tournament in Italy. We used German algebraic for communication and uniquely I took the precaution of scoring that way. My school German must have been up to the task, perhaps helped by the odd bit of chess German from some 1960s translations into (East) German of Russian material. Schwarz steht besser isn't too difficult after all. I couldn't remember Roachade, but I had the black pieces so white played it first.

[MJMcCready]

Wikipedia sides with those who dislike "castle":

The rook (/rʊk/; ♖,♜) is a piece in the game of chess resembling a castle. Formerly the piece (from Persian رخ rokh/rukh) was called the tower, marquess, rector, and comes (Sunnucks 1970). The term castle is considered to be informal, incorrect, or old-fashioned.

And to think it used to be the most powerful piece on the board.

[Tim Spanton]

Does anyone know how English chess terminology settled on 'rook' for the piece and 'castling' for, well, castling?

Good question! "Rook" derives from the old Persian "rukh", meaning a chariot. I've never understood how the word seems to have come from there straight into English. Or for that matter how a chariot (relatively small and mobile) becomes a massive, static fortification in other European languages. (To add to Joseph's confusion: in French, the piece is called a "tour" - a tower - but making the joint move with the king is "roquer"!)

Would not 'tower' have referred to a tower on a war-elephant's back, so still fairly mobile?

[Michael Farthing]

Does anyone know how English chess terminology settled on 'rook' for the piece and 'castling' for, well, castling?

Good question! "Rook" derives from the old Persian "rukh", meaning a chariot. I've never understood how the word seems to have come from there straight into English. Or for that matter how a chariot (relatively small and mobile) becomes a massive, static fortification in other European languages. (To add to Joseph's confusion: in French, the piece is called a "tour" - a tower - but making the joint move with the king is "roquer"!)

Would not 'tower' have referred to a tower on a war-elephant's back, so still fairly mobile?

That is what I always thought.