Abecedarian : posts tagged chess

Found 111 posts tagged ‘chess’

Restoring the Lost Sense – February 24, 2017

From Die Muskete, 1919. See If a Chessman Were a Word: A Chess-Calvino Dictionary.

[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy. We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free. The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]

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#vintage illustration #fairy #peace #feather #chess board #illustration

Restoring the Lost Sense – November 30, 2016

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From Die Muskete, 1919. See If a Chessman Were a Word: A Chess-Calvino Dictionary.

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#vintage illustration #chess board #chess #illustration

Puzzles and Games – November 7, 2014

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The longest tournament chess game took 20 hours and 15 minutes, but we know that one game of chess can actually last a lifetime, as we see in A Boyar of the Terrible by Frederick J. Whishaw, 1896. The caption reads, "He suddenly died while playing at chess." See If a Chessman Were a Word: A Chess-Calvino Dictionary.

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#vintage illustration #chess #illustration

Puzzles and Games – September 16, 2014

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Gary Barwin reports:

Aaron Tucker has created this amazing site, Chessbard which translates chess games into poetry. You can play classic games, play a game against a chessbot, or modify games. The site then 'translates' the game into poems: both a White poem and a Black poem. Aaron has also written an essay about the project and its development.

I was delighted to be able to contribute to the site. I created some poems (by modifying a classic game) and wrote a discussion about what I did and about chess in general. Read it here.

Really fascinating.

And while you're thinking about chess, definitely check out the very lovely, Calvino-Chess Dictionary by Craig Conley. You can buy the book or read it online. I'd recommend the book!

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#chess

Puzzles and Games – August 1, 2014

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Kirsan Ilyumzhinov calls chess "a human activity which brings together the human brain and the competitive spirit." But we humbly beg to differ and cite The History of Egypt from the Earliest Times till the Conquest by the Arabs A.D. 640 by Samuel Sharpe, 1859. See If a Chessman Were a Word: A Chess-Calvino Dictionary.

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#vintage illustration #anthropomorphism #chess #illustration #animal game

Puzzles and Games – March 15, 2014

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The caption reads: "They ... were soon deep in the game." (From The Quiver, 1883.) See If a Chessman Were a Word: A Chess-Calvino Dictionary.

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#vintage illustration #chess #illustration

Restoring the Lost Sense – March 11, 2014

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An illustration from Saturday Magazine (1837). The caption reads: "Satan playing at chess with man, for his soul." See If a Chessman Were a Word: A Chess-Calvino Dictionary.

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#vintage illustration #devil #satan #angel #good and evil #chess #illustration

Restoring the Lost Sense – May 23, 2013

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An illustration from a 1900 issue of Harmsworth's magazine. The caption reads: "'Stay there,' she said, 'or I will move the pieces.'" See If a Chessman Were a Word: A Chess-Calvino Dictionary.

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#vintage illustration #chess #illustration

Puzzles and Games – July 3, 2011

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"Everything in the world is like a game of chess ... everything."
—Gustav Meyrink, The Golem

Dedicated to Wilfred Hou Je Bek.

(See also If A Chessman Were A Word: A Chess-Calvino Dictionary.)

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#chess

Puzzles and Games – March 8, 2011

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The following passage from Robert Irwin's astonishingly brilliant The Arabian Nightmare, in which a character traverses a chessboard-like Cairo, recalls our own manual on using a game of chess to construct a story: If A Chessman Were A Word: A Chess-Calvino Dictionary.

Crossing the open spaces of the city was like moving across a chess board, chill and dark in the shadows, still brilliantly warm in the places the sun could reach. He was crossing a dark square now near the Bab al-Luq, where the rich merchants' houses were, when he saw a face, high up in the dark shadows of an upper-storey casement, staring down at him. It was a woman's face, round and plump and shining silver as if it was the moon.

Deliciously, the character in Irwin's novel is about to confront a knight!

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#chess

Oldest Tricks in the Book – October 17, 2007

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The game of Jenga-Chess. See full-sized photo at Kim's Place.

Temporary Sacrifice of the Queen

—John Nunn, The Mammoth Book of Chess (1997)

Speaking of Chess, some people apparently play it on the sand dunes of the beach, with giant pieces. For example, here's a black queen (controlled by a bathing beauty) that just took a red knight.

Others combine the games of Jenga and Chess, to build ornate towers (see photo).

Here are the nuts and bolts of Chess.

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Foo writes:

Just for the fun, I don't know if you are aware that your "bathing beauty" is actually the Female Chess World Champion.

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#chess