I couldn’t help snorting when I came across an article in the Guardian last week (about the ongoing legal battle to get bridge recognised as a sport) in which the game was described as ‘genteel and physically unchallenging’. What? Bridge is physically exhausting — all that sustained concentration leaves you floored. As for genteel —
This week I continue with my analysis of Nigel Short’s recent animadversions upon the differences between the male and female brain and his opinion that women cannot match up to men across the chessboard. The great German poet Goethe once described chess as ‘a touchstone of the brain’; he wrote this, in fact, in the
In Competition No. 2896 you were invited to take Kipling’s ‘If’ and recast it on behalf of a politician on the campaign trail. In an interview with the New Republic in 1985, Mario Cuomo said that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. And Hugo Rifkind, in conversation on Radio 4 with the poet
Four unclued lights can be arranged to form an eight-word excerpt from a quotation (in ODQ). One of these lights provides a cryptic indication of each of the other unclued lights. Each of thirteen clues comprises a definition and a hidden consecutive jumble of the answer including one extra letter; the extras spell the name
PERCH (13A), SCAR (21A and 10D), SHAD (40A), EEL (5D) AND CARP (19D) were ignored in wordplay in their clues. The other unclued lights are listed in Chambers as things you may FISH for. First prize P.D.H. Riddell, London SE23 Runners-up Lynne Gilchrist, Willoughby, Australia; A. Willson, Leicester
White to play. This is from Polgar-Short, -Buenos Aires 2000. Here we return to the theme of Judit Polgar’s massive plus score against Nigel Short. Nigel’s logical brain no doubt spotted 1 Rxg4 Rf1+ mating. What did Judit play instead? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 12 May or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk
