Puzzles & games

Bridge

Bridge | 12 April 2017

Bridge 24 was set up seven years ago by four Polish internationals who wanted to bring the glory days of the Eighties and Nineties back to Polish bridge: teach kids, organise seminars and start winning medals again. They have succeeded magnificently. Poland are the reigning world champions and Michal Klukowski, at 17, became the youngest

Chess

Presidential panic

This month, watch out for unidentified fleeing presidents. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of Fidé, the World Chess Federation, and a self-confessed alien abductee, seems to have a revolution on his hands. Several of his closest lieutenants, such as Giorgios Makropolous and Nigel Freeman from the Athens HQ, are insisting that Kirsan has resigned, while Kirsan himself

Competition

Dear John

In Competition No. 2992 you were invited to submit a Dear John letter, in prose or verse, in the style of a well-known author.   My, you were good this week — good enough to make being jilted seem quite the thing. Even that most maddening of break-up clichés ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ has

Crossword

2305: Whodunnit?

The unclued lights (one of two words) can be resolved into three associated trios which are not the solution to the problem. Solvers have to search the completed grid and then highlight the trio which does so.   Across 11    Maigret’s sidekick has read case in French (5) 12    Those in the band that take

Crossword solution

to 2302: Urbane turban

The twelve undefined solutions become one Scottish and eleven English towns, if the final letter is omitted or a letter is added at the start. First prize Pamela Moorey, London EC1 Runners-up Glyn Watkins, Portishead, Bristol Lowri Williams, Barlaston, Stoke-on-Trent

Puzzles

no. 452

White to play. This position is from Euwe-Fischer, New York 1957. White has two winning moves in this position. Can you find both of them? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 18 April or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat.