It was time to celebrate! The Schapiro Spring Foursomes was back again after the enforced Covid break, and the EBU’s best tournament (IMHO), with its double elimination format, was down in numbers but not in quality. My team was knocked out in the quarter-final by 1VP by the team that eventually won: Team Hinden, a
The Superbet Chess Classic in Bucharest concluded last weekend in a dramatic tiebreak between Wesley So, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Levon Aronian, who all took wildly different paths to finish the main event on 5.5/9. Wesley So was the tournament rock. He won two controlled games against Nepomniachtchi and Mamedyarov and otherwise never looked in danger.
White to play. Vachier-Lagrave-Caruana, Bucharest 2022. The Bh4 can retreat to g3, f2 or e1. Which one is best, and why? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 23 May. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks
In Competition No. 3249, you were invited to submit an extract from a Mills & Boon novel whose central character is a contemporary politician. The much-mocked pictures of a proudly hirsute, manspreading Macron, looking every inch the M&B hero, gave me the idea for this challenge. But he was nudged aside – in a truly
The unclued entries have something in common, and are the most recent of their type. One umlaut should be ignored in these entries, and elsewhere an accent. Across 1 Perhaps not swinging is sordid (5) 4 I might get candy floss. Like some chocolate? (9, two words) 10 State with importance line interrupts fluency
The unclued lights when arranged as 12, 11, 43, 5, 24, 1D, 1A form Chambers’ definition of MULLET at 30D. First prize Lynne Mullen, Eastbourne Runners-up Susan Bell, Reeth, N. Yorks; Paul Davies, Reading, Berkshire
