Puzzles & games

Bridge

Bridge | 3 April 2014

Dallas to me was an Eighties TV series with huge shoulder pads until I arrived there to play the American Spring Nationals last week. The American Nationals are bigger, better and  brighter than anything we Brits can imagine — after the first week they had filled over 7,000 tables — and it is organised so

Chess

Candidates compendium

This week I focus on a number of key positions from the World Championship qualifier, the Candidates tournament, which concluded at the beginning of this week in Khanty-Mansisk in Siberia. The Candidates was a remarkable event, with two former world champions, Viswanathan Anand (the ultimate winner) and Vladimir Kramnik, competing, along with a former Fidé

Competition

Vice verse

In Competition 2841 you were invited to paint an amusing portrait in verse of the vice and folly of humankind. It was William Congreve who wrote that it is the business of a comic poet to paint the vice and follies of humankind, and I thought I would give you the opportunity to do just

Crossword

2156: Shoreline

Seven items of a kind read clockwise round the perimeter. In ten clues, cryptic indications omit reference to parts of answers; these parts must be highlighted, to reveal a definition of the perimeter items. Letters in corner squares and those adjacent to them could form WADERS, NOT OLD.   Across   11    Spirit and

Crossword solution

to 2153: Selling

Corrections of misprints in clues form the phrase BAIT AND SWITCH. Unclued lights are examples of bait (10, 16, 23, 38) and switch (15, 20, 31, 37).   First prize Robert Hinton, Swansea Runners-up Mark Roberts, Luxembourg; Roger Sherman, Richmond, Surrey

Puzzles

No. 308

White to play. This position is from Topalov-Kramnik, Fidé Candidates, Khanty-Mansisk 2014. Kramnik has badly misplayed the opening and now Topalov crashed through in decisive fashion. Can you see the key move? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 8 April or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk or by fax on 020 7681 3773. The winner