The latest Sherlock Holmes film, A Game of Shadows, starring Robert Downey jr and Jude Law, pays distinct homage to Conan Doyle’s one direct reference to chess in the Sherlock Holmes canon. Although in The Dying Detective Holmes and Watson repair for ‘something nutritious’ at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, then the traditional hub of London chess, the only actual mention of the game comes in The Retired Colourman, where Holmes asserts that chess expertise is the mark of a scheming mind — a quote that makes it into the film script.
A Game of Shadows revolves around a chess game between the two super-brains, Holmes and Professor Moriarty, that ultimate schemer. Interestingly, at the film’s dénouement, as the protagonists switch to playing without sight of the board (a further indication of their awesome mental powers), the game can be readily identified from the moves each speaks out.
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