The Chess Olympiad for national teams is now underway in Batumi, Georgia. Over 200 teams are competing and the lavish opening ceremony was attended by 5,000 spectators. This is certainly an indication of the increasing popularity of chess, paradoxically fuelled by the advent of computer technology. There are now 11 million online chess games played worldwide
In Competition No. 3067 you were invited to provide a tale of travel misery on behalf of a well-known traveller from the fields of fact or fiction. The seed of this assignment was a column in the Observer called My Crap Holiday, which invited readers to share travel horrors: inclement weather, devil children, oven-like
One unclued light, a term for a boundary of an area whose name is formed by two unclued lights, is a 19 of five items (one of which consists of two words, and one of which is hyphened) reading clockwise in the perimeter. Letters in corner squares and those adjacent to them could make CLAN
Unclued lights are MOONS OF (1A) SATURN (9), which are OTHERWORLDLY (2). First prize Don Young, Shaw, Oldham Runners-up Samantha Pine, Poole, Dorset; Michael Debenham, Shrewsbury, Shropshire
White to play. This position is from Rogers-Milos, Manila Olympiad 1992. How can White do better than recapturing on c3? Answers to me at the Spectator by Tuesday 2 October or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address
