I have a horrible feeling my column this week is going to read like a mutual-back-scratch. In the last issue, Janet wrote about my team winning the Hubert Phillips Trophy (which gave my ego as much of a boost as winning the thing itself). Now her team has gone and won the ‘Patton Lavazza’ at
This description of Viktor Korchnoi was coined (an oblique reference to Muhammad Ali’s nickname of Louisville Lip) by Ian Ward of the Daily Telegraph during the Baguio City World Championship of 1978. During the pre-Kasparov mid-1970s and early 1980s, world title chess was dominated by the three great matches between Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly
In Competition No. 3056 you were invited to submit an elegy on the death of the High Street. Your entries were poignant and clever, and transported me back to teenage Saturdays frittered away in the likes of Dolcis, Lilly & Skinner and Freeman, Hardy & Willis. John Morrison’s lines ‘Oh Amazon how swift you
Five unclued lights form a quotation from a work concerning the 18 of 19, 15A and 23. The 18’s name will appear in the completed grid and must be shaded. Across 4 Placidity of English queen nearing Ross and Cromarty town (9) 9 Dumb mimickings parish rioters bandied (10) 11 Old statesman from Burundi
WEIN (2D) suggests 21, 35 and 37 (German wines); WEIB suggests 10, 25 and 42 (Germanic female names); GESANG suggests 14, 27 and 31 (German-speaking composers of sung works). STRAUSS, highlighted, composed the waltz Wein, Weib und Gesang. First prize P.G. Hampton, Wimborne, Dorset Runners-up Roy Robinson, Sheffield; Jenny Mitchell, Croscombe, Somerset
Black to play. This is from Karpov-Korchnoi, Dortmund 1994. In this unusual position Karpov has two queens but Korchnoi’s forces coordinate much more efficiently. His next move led to a decisive material gain. Can you see it? Answers via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk by Tuesday 17 July. There is a prize of £20 for the first
