Imagine you are on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. You have just won £500,000 and cannot go home with less than £120,000. You use your last lifeline (50/50) leaving you a straight guess to become a millionaire or drop £380K. Even though it’s mathematically correct to guess, most people would take the money.
The French Defence appears to be somewhat cautious in nature but can in fact lead to disruptive middlegame clashes. It was a favourite of such aficionados of counterattack as Aron Nimzowitsch, Mikhail Botvinnik and Viktor Korchnoi. One of my favourite lines was espoused by world champion Tigran Petrosian, for example in the following win against
In Competition No. 3097 you were invited to submit a poem about Englishness in the style of a well-known poet. The line-up was mostly predictable — from Chesterton, so-called ‘prophet of Brexit’, through Larkin, Betjeman, Brooke, Housman and, of course, Kipling. But it was an American, Ogden Nash, whose pen portrait of us prompted
The unclued lights, four of two words, individually or as a pair, are of a kind. Across 11 After hint turned up, end of match had leftist outwitted (7) 12 Problem with French name turning page (6) 13 January not starting pleasant round island — likely to be soaked? (9, three words) 14 Break-time
The first and second letters of the unclued lights are the same as the third and fourth ones. All the solutions are words or one phrase eight letters long. ARARAT at 32 Down matches the pattern but is only six-letters in length and had to be highlighted. First prize D. Thorpe, Totternhoe, Bedfordshire Runners-up
Black to play. This is from Carlo-Haast, Grenke Chess Open 2019. There is a saying in chess that when you see a good move, you should look for a better one. 1 … Bxe5 is fine for Black but he can do a lot better. How? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 14
