Black to play. Vidit-Al-Mudahka, Fide World Rapid Team Championship, 2024. The Qatari grandmaster landed a decisive blow here. What did he play? Email answers tochess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 19 August. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 Nd5! then 1…Kxd5 2 Qd4# or 1…Kxf3 2 Qg2# or 1…Kf5/1…Kd3 2 Qg6# Last week’s winner Mike Truran, Ducklington, Witney, Oxon
In The Importance of Being Earnest Jack Worthing was given his surname by Mr Thomas Cardew, who happened to have a first-class ticket for Worthing in his pocket when he found him in the cloakroom at Victoria station – the Brighton line. When told, Lady Bracknell exclaimed: ‘The line is immaterial!’ This turns out not to be true, since it emerges that Miss Prism left a baby at the cloakroom of the Brighton line. Was it immaterial that Mr Cardew (whose Christian name – ‘James, or Thomas’ – Lady Bracknell also assumes is immaterial) had a first-class ticket? Not at all, for his wealth made his granddaughter an eligible bride for
In Competition 3362 you were invited to submit a passage from Shakespeare as rewritten by the sensitivity reader. The entries were on the whole excellent and it was painful to have to jettison so many: often it came down to a repetition of the same excerpt. A special mention to D.A. Prince (‘My partner’s eyes are theirs: I cannot share comparisons’), David Blakey for his Old Shepherd’s speech, and Robert Brydges for his revised Twelfth Night in which Viola ends up with Olivia, Sebastian with Antonio, and Orsino is left ‘betrothèd nor to maid nor man’. The winners get £25. This royal throne of monarchs, government-supported, This oft-changing democracy, this seat of
The unclued lights are of a kind and are listed in Chambers. Across 1 Dry duck takes in energy drink (8) 6 Least exciting exam takes a minute (6) 10 Place for improvement? (8,4) 11 Man of note could break galley up – regularly (5) 13 Snapshot taken last month around Ohio for US novelist (7) 17 Watch drunken orgy after broadcast (6-2) 21 Wandering bear wandering round tarn (8) 23 Sign, given role in section of defence (7) 25 Sea loch oddly not found in Seville (3) 26 Lengthen in either direction (3) 28 Makes it possible for former England manager to go topless (7) 29 Basic principle of
Provence My eldest daughter’s husband is from Como. In the early 2000s George Clooney caused a stir in the town when he bought a villa on the lakeside nearby, triggering what’s become known as the Clooney effect – a rise in house prices and the number of ‘bougie’ shops and restaurants catering for an increasing number of visitors. Rather than take a boat trip and gawp at the Villa Oleandra, visitors would be better heading to Gardone on Lake Garda and visiting Gabriele D’Annunzio’s insane Il Vittoriale. Unlike Clooney, D’Annunzio (1863-1938), whose motto was ‘Me ne frego’ (I don’t give a damn), was a short, ugly, almost blind, toothless early
The unclued lights can be sorted into four trios of forenames in a reducing anagram chain: MONICA, NAOMI, MONA (4,31): DECLAN, LANCE, NEAL (12,24,36): SINEAD, DIANE, ENID (33,15,34) and ALISON, SONIA, SIAN (42,13). First prize E.C. Jones, Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire Runners-up Charles Barr, Norwich; Mike Brand, Edinburgh
‘Zip my head in,’ he said, after climbing into a white jumpsuit with a mesh helmet. It was a beekeeper’s outfit, but the effect was less apicultural and more like the scene in E.T. where the special agents in biohazard suits come for the alien. The builder boyfriend was struggling with the zip around his neck so I made sure it was shut. He then fussed with the arms and legs so much, worrying about gaps, that in the end I used gaffer tape to tape his wrists and ankles. ‘Now you look like a Teletubby,’ I said. ‘Foot the ladder, will you?’ he asked. The BB had come home
The recent European Championship in Denmark has given all keen bridge reporters plenty of material, I liked the following hand from the bulletin, featuring Allan Livgard on the winning Norwegian team. It’s particularly interesting to notice the slow approach in the auction by N/S; jumping around and making nondescript cue-bids in the opponent’s suits does not make for better auctions – it’s usually better to use the space to get your suits across. Allan’s 2♠ on the second round is a good example, partner Terje Aa’s 4♦ is another, and finally the well-judged raise to 6♦ made it three. East led the Ace of Hearts. There’s some scope for setting
Home Riots subsided after 7 August, a night when many were expected but only empty streets or demonstrations against riots eventuated. By 12 August there had been 975 arrests and 546 charges in 36 of the 43 police force areas in England and Wales. Rioters could be released from jail after serving 40 per cent of their sentence, as part of the early release scheme to ease prison overcrowding, Downing Street said. Ricky Jones, a councillor for Dartford, now suspended from the Labour party, was remanded in custody after being charged with encouraging violent disorder in Walthamstow. The judge told him: ‘It is alleged that using a microphone you addressed
Would-be veep Tim Walz has opened Pandora’s box with his use of the W-word to characterise Donald Trump and his running mate (no sniggering at the back: this W is for ‘weird’). Because, let’s face it, a heck of a lot of politicians are way-out weird, aren’t they? It’s practically part of the job description. If we start calling them all out on it, the currency’s going to devalue fast. My thesaurus devotes nearly half a page to synonyms for weird. ‘Freaky. Wacko. Odd. Eccentric. Crazy. Off the wall. Out to lunch…’ Well, sure, that’s pretty much Trump to a T. He is uniquely odd, but those adjectives neatly summarise
Ihad entirely missed the online furore in which my colleague Douglas Murray was engulfed recently and only found out about it through a dubious article on the Guardian website by Kenan Malik. So I was slow off the mark, the reason being that I never read Twitter and have not the slightest interest in what anybody has to say on that absurd forum. (This includes whatever is said by the several people on there who are pretending to be me, incidentally.) Missing out on Douglas’s misery was a fairly crushing blow: there is nothing one enjoys more than revelling in the misfortunes of a colleague, especially if that colleague is
In her first speech as Chancellor, Rachel Reeves made much of being the first woman to hold that position. ‘To every young woman and girl,’ she said, ‘let today show that there should be no ceilings on your ambitions.’ Britain has already had three female prime ministers, two female foreign secretaries and six female home secretaries – so what makes Reeves think that girls and young women have low ambitions? This week’s A-level results and accompanying university offers will show that it’s the boys she should be more worried about. For every 100 girls who secure a university place this week, about 75 boys will do the same For every
Popcorn not being the traditional French treat to celebrate an entertaining spectacle, break out the caramel au beurre salé. J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk have been accused in a complaint to French prosecutors of misgendering and ‘acts of aggravated cyber harassment’ against the Algerian boxer and newly crowned Olympic gold medallist Imane Khelif, whom I must avoid misgendering myself, lest I find myself a target of prosecution. I shall therefore refer to this individual by the pronoun K, so as to avoid confusion with Elon’s X. French lawyers have developed a taste for associating high-profile names with even the most spurious complaints After K’s Olympic triumph, Rowling, the world’s most
As Harry and Meghan prepare to head off on yet another quasi-regal tour, this time to Colombia, it is surely nothing more than a coincidence that their experienced chief of staff Josh Kettler – a so-called ‘executive accelerator and strategist’ – has left ‘by mutual agreement’ after a three-month trial period in the job. The only detail released was that he was not felt to be the right fit. The timing would be dismal by any standards, given that he was responsible for organising and executing the couple’s trip; the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will now be travelling without Kettler. However, his departure now means that he is the
Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida has announced he will be stepping down as leader of the Liberal Democratic party next month. This means yet another new leader, the 13th in my quarter century in the country (unless one of the previous incumbents fancies another go) but almost certainly not a radical new direction. Whoever wins the LDP leadership election will become prime minister, as the party controls both houses of parliament, though no general election need be held until 2025. The announcement has been declared a ‘surprise’, but in truth, the resignation of a Japanese premier is never really that much of a surprise. It happens so regularly that there are jokes about
As the war in Gaza drags on into its eleventh month, and the conflict risks expanding into a regional war involving both Iran and its Lebanese proxies, it is surely time to question what would be a successful outcome for Israel. Militarily, the IDF has inflicted enormous damage on Hamas. Yet around 115 hostages continue to languish in Gaza and, in public relations terms, Israel is clearly losing the propaganda war. One of Israel’s problems is that it has simply lost control of the narrative The Jewish state is increasingly accused of war crimes and its allies are more likely to call for a ceasefire than issue a stalwart defence
In a low-key ceremony in the Catalan parliament on Saturday, Spain’s former health minister Salvador Illa was sworn in as the new president of Catalonia. Despite coming first in the regional elections on 12 May, Illa’s Socialists failed to secure a majority and have spent the last three months in cross-party negotiations. They finally struck a deal with the pro-independence ERC, which came third in the May election after losing 13 of its 33 seats. Illa is the first unionist politician to become president of Catalonia since 2010, so there has been a lot of talk in Spanish media of a ‘nueva etapa’, or new era – a chance for Catalans
E-scooters are the bane of modern civilisation. They are the stealth bombers of our pavements. They are a silent danger to those who ride them, and a threat to life and limb for pedestrians and cyclists forced to share paths and roadways with them. They give accident and emergency departments unwanted business, thus imposing a significant social and financial cost on the wider community. There is nothing worse than being out for a walk with your young children in a park or on a shared pathway, only to be nearly mowed down by a speeding e-scooter rider you never heard coming, who sounded no warning, and who obviously doesn’t care
On Saturday, when Israel attacked the al-Taba’een Hamas command centre in Gaza City, jihadi propagandists swung into action straight away. The group had placed the military facility inside a school compound for precisely this reason. Now it was time to cash in. At first, things seemed to be going according to plan. ‘Nearly 100 killed in Israeli strike on school, Gaza officials say,’ blared the Washington Post, a typical example. In the story, Mahmoud Bassal, a ‘Gaza civil defence spokesman’, was given space to hype up the attack without any indication that the Gaza civil defence is controlled by Hamas. Hamas sat back and waited for the international outrage to place
It must be exhausting being Elon Musk. Alongside sending rockets into space, working on brain implants and running one of the world’s biggest social-media firms, he seems to have a plethora of beefs to attend to. The arrogance of EU officialdom knows no bounds. So soon after Musk’s war of words with Keir Starmer, over the UK PM’s handling of the recent unrest, an old Brussels-based foe of his, European Commissioner Thierry Breton, has popped back up to chastise him for not ushering in censorship on X fast enough. Last night, Breton posted an open letter, channelling a jobsworth tax inspector, reminding Musk of his obligations, under the EU’s 2022 Digital
