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Chessville
From the
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Something to Do With the Polgars by Jon, as retold by Rick Kennedy
"Who's winning?" she wanted to know. Then she pointed, "What's that dinosaur doing on the board??" Sean chuckled. "It's my set," he said. "I lost a piece a few days ago. I replaced it with a T. Rex." It made sense to me, but not to Mary Elizabeth. "What piece is it? Knight? Bishop? Rook? Queen?" she wanted to know. "It could be any one of them. It doesn't matter," I told her, slyly. "I can checkmate in one move, whatever it is."
I will give my sister credit: she scratched her head, bit her lip, and started to figure it out. "I've got it! If your dinosaur is really a knight, then it
checkmates from g6." "If it's a bishop, then moving it to f6 mates. "Or, if it's a rook, then Re8 or Rh7 finishes Sean off. "Finally, if it's a queen, then there are six ways to win: Qd8, Qe8, Qf8, Qf6, Qg7, or Qh7." Which was really pretty good for someone who once wanted to know why the pieces were black and white, not pink and green. Then, she really shocked me. "Actually, dear brother, it does matter which piece the dinosaur is." She smiled at me. "After all, look at the position. It's your move. But what was Sean's last move?" Sean opened his mouth, but I gave him a killer look, and he said nothing. Mary Elizabeth continued. "He only has a king, so it had to be a king move. Where did the king come from?" "England?" Sean asked. I slugged him one. "Not from g7 or h7," said my sister. "That would be illegal. He had to come from g8, where he was in check." Sean nodded, and rubbed his arm. "And what was your move before that, Jon?" I clenched my jaw. She wasn't getting any help from me. "Before Jon's move, the Tyrannosaurus must have blocked the diagonal between the his bishop and Sean's king. Then it moved to e7. That could only mean a rook on e6, or a knight on d5." Mary Elizabeth crossed her arms. "Since you're such a great chess player," she said, raising her eyebrows, "you never would have moved a rook from e6 to e7, when moving it one more space to e8 would have been checkmate, right away. I figure it must have been a knight on d5. The T-Rex is a knight." She tossed her head and sailed out of the room. I have no idea how she figured me out, but I'm sure it had
something to do with the Polgars. Editor's Note...Rick
sent along the following note regarding this story: "This
story was first published, in a somewhat different form, in the July/August
issue of the United States Chess Federation's "School Mates" magazine, where
it was accompanied by a note from editor Brian Bugbee: "P.S. Judit thought
it was a pawn - pretty clever when you think about it!" Index of Fiction at Chessville
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