Chess and Sherlock Holmes

Edward Winter

Carleton Hobbs (Source: Spring 1964 Sherlock Holmes Journal, page 119)

We offer a digest of C.N. items about Sherlock Holmes.

His famous remark ‘Amberley excelled at chess – one mark, Watson, of a scheming mind’ appeared in ‘The Adventure of the Retired Colourman’ in The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes (London, 1927). That source is now well known to chess enthusiasts, but was not always so. On page 34 of his anthology Chess Pieces (London, 1949), Norman Knight related that, uncertain of which Holmes story had included the quotation, he had written a letter of enquiry to The Observer; no fewer than 82 replies were received (‘which shows that the field of Holmesian scholarship is better tilled than he [Knight] had imagined’).

The other prominent connection between the detective and chess is Raymond Smullyan’s book The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes (London, 1980).

Imitations and parodies of the Holmes stories are not infrequent, and three good ones with a chess connection come to mind. The most recent is ‘The Case of the Mental Detective’ by William R. Hartston, on pages 25-30 of his book Soft Pawn (London, 1980).

Chess Review, February 1962 (pages 45-47) published ‘The Moriarty Gambit’ by Fritz Leiber, which included the following game:

Sherlock Holmes – James Moriarty
Queen’s Gambit Declined

1 d4 d5 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 c5 4 cxd5 cxd4 5 Qxd4 Nc6 6 Qa4 exd5 7 Nf3 d4 8 Nb5 Bd7 9 Nbxd4 Bb4+ 10 Kd1 Nxd4 11 Qxb4 Nxf3 12 exf3 Ba4+ 13 Ke2 Qd1+ 14 Ke3 O-O-O 15 Bd2 Qxa1 16 Ba6 Re8+ 17 Kf4 Re4+ 18 fxe4 g5+ 19 Kg3 Qxh1 20 Qxb7+ Kd8 21 Qc8+ Ke7 22 Bb4+ Kf6 23 Qf5+ Kg7 24 Qxg5 mate.

Leiber’s story was reproduced on pages 205-216 of Chess in Literature by M. Truzzi (New York, 1975).

Finally, pages 289-293 of the October 1918 BCM had ‘A Game at Chess’ by ‘E.A.G.’ (who may have been Edwin A. Greig). This yarn involved Mr Shercock Bones, Whatson and Professor Moratorium. The sleuth declared to his friend, ‘I shall play Moratorium tonight – I shall not lose the game – and I shall make more than 16 sacrifices’, and he fulfilled these undertakings as follows:

Professor Moratorium – Shercock Bones
King’s Gambit Declined

1 e4 e5 2 f4 d6 3 d4 Ne7 4 Bd2 Bd7 5 Bb4 Nbc6 6 Ba3 Na5 7 f5 Nec6 8 c3 Qf6 9 Nd2 Be7 10 Qg4 Qh6 11 Ndf3 Qh3 12 gxh3 h5 13 Qxg7 O-O-O 14 Qxf7 Nb3 15 axb3 Rh6 16 Bg2 Be8 17 Qg7 Bh4+ 18 Kf1 Rh8 19 d5 Kb8 20 Re1 Ka8 21 Qxh8 Nb4 22 cxb4 Bb5+ 23 Re2 Rxh8 24 f6 Rh6 25 f7 Rh8 26 f8(Q)+ Rxf8 Drawn.

An appropriate conclusion to this item is the front cover of a French edition of an Arthur Conan Doyle collection, published in 1948, Un échec de Sherlock Holmes:

(3531)

Rick Kennedy (Columbus, OH, USA) reports that he has written several Sherlock Holmes stories with a chess theme. Two of them were published in Chess Life, as follows:

• ‘The Royal Game’, August 1982, pages 26-27, with the solutions on page 10 of the October 1982 issue.
• ‘The Case of the Diogenes Club’, July 1993, page 78.

(3542)

Maxwell Bukofzer (1875-1958) wrote a number of Sherlock Holmes stories with a chess theme, such as ‘The Adventure of the Mother-of-Pearl Buttons’ in the Chess Amateur, January 1925 (pages 123-125), February 1925 (pages 152-154) and March 1925 (pages 186-188), as well as passim in The Gambit in the late 1920s.

(3571)

Mark N. Taylor (Mt Berry, GA, USA) reports that a catalogue by Kester Svendsen lists a short story entitled ‘The Mystery of the Missing Pawn: An Adventure of Herlock Shomes’ as having been published on pages 33-34 of the British Chess Bulletin, January 1911.

We should like to hear from any reader who can tell us more about the Bulletin, a very scarce publication. According to the entry in Douglas Betts’ Annotated Bibliography, it was ‘a monthly chess journal at a popular price’ edited by H.T. Dickinson and ran for four issues (October 1910 to January 1911).

(3634)

What material about Sherlock Holmes and Harry N. Pillsbury was published in 1964? Some puzzling complications arise from that apparently straightforward question.

Page 23 of An Annotated International Bibliography of Chess Articles in Non-Chess English Language Periodicals 1783-1977 by Paul Richman (Old Bridge, 1978) had the following entry:

Richard Wincor’s name is familiar to Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts. He wrote Sherlock Holmes in Tibet (New York, 1968), although that book had no chess content.

Nor have we found anything by Wincor, or about chess, in the Baker Street Journal of the time indicated by Richman.

Even so, the following appeared on page 144 of Grandmasters of Chess by Harold C. Schonberg (Philadelphia and New York, 1973):

‘Hastings, 1895 then disbanded. But everybody was talking about Pillsbury. There was amazement then that an unknown should take first prize in so powerful a field. In later years theories were to be advanced. The Spring 1964 issue of the Baker Street Journal had a learned article “proving” that the great Sherlock Holmes impersonated Pillsbury at the tournament. But this theory is not generally accepted in chess circles.’

We have found that a Holmes/Pillsbury article, entitled ‘Yet Another Case of Identity’, was printed not in the US publication the Baker Street Journal but on pages 115-118 of the Spring 1964 issue of a  London-based publication, the Sherlock Holmes Journal.

Surprisingly, the author was not Richard Wincor but Harold Schonberg himself:

At present it is unclear to us on what grounds both Richman and Schonberg mentioned the Baker Street Journal, and why Wincor was named by Richman as the author of a 1964 piece on Holmes/Pillsbury entitled ‘The Sherlock Holmes Opening’. Does it really exist, in addition to Schonberg’s article of the same year on the same theme?

(5257)

Eli Hiltch (Ramat Gan, Israel) has drawn our attention to an on-line cumulated index of the Baker Street Journal, which enables us to clarify the Pillsbury matter discussed in C.N. 5257.

A story entitled ‘The Sherlock Holmes Opening’ by Richard Wincor was published on pages 92-94 of the June 1965 issue of the Baker Street Journal.

The item had nothing to do with Pillsbury but was a short story arising from ‘the case of Vigor, the Hammersmith wonder, mentioned in “The Sussex Vampire”’. Holmes took a board in a simultaneous display by the five-year-old prodigy Anton Vigorsky. All 100 opponents had the white pieces, and Vigorsky decided to put toxic Kafka Powder on their kings and queens, expecting the pieces to be chewed nervously during play. However, ‘absent-minded, like most geniuses’, he administered the poison to his own black pieces. And so: ‘Tonight it was Vigorsky who grew nervous. Sherlock Holmes was a match for him; the lad nibbled and chewed, then collapsed.’ Or, more graphically: ‘Vigor was turning green as he fell head first against his own battle forces, nose on the king’s rook.’

The article concluded with this game:

1 d4 d5 2 e3 Nf6 3 Nd2 c5 4 c3 Nc6 5 f4 Bg4 6 Be2 Bxe2 7 Qxe2 e6 8 Ngf3 Be7 9 Ne5 O-O 10 O-O Ne8 11 Qg4 ‘Black swooned’.

The magazine (page 128) described Richard Wincor as ‘a practicing attorney and an expert on copyright law’. He later wrote Baroque Chess Openings (Boston, 1972).

In that same issue of the Baker Street Journal (pages 83-85) there was an article by Harold C. Schonberg (on Holmes and music, not chess), reprinted from the New York Times of 7 March 1965, and the fact that he had items published in both the Baker Street Journal and the Sherlock Holmes Journal in 1964-65 may explain why he confused the two publications when writing about Pillsbury in his book Grandmasters of Chess (C.N. 5257).

Mate in two.

‘Dear Dr Watson: Can you solve this?

I played a game and arrived at this position. To my surprise it developed to be a sound two-mover. (This is a clue.)’

Watson believed that he had found the solution, only to be contradicted by Sherlock Holmes.

The composition was featured in an article ‘Dr Watson Solves a Problem’ by P.G. Keeney on page 8 of the January 1945 issue of the Chess Correspondent. Almost impossible to summarize, it is given here in full.

For a larger version, click here.

A further Sherlock Holmes article, ‘The Adventure of the Strange Sound’ by Alain C. White, was published on pages 229-230 of the May 1914 Chess Amateur, and was based on this problem by Murray Marble:

Mate in two

Click here for larger versions of page 229 and page 230.

There may, at first sight, appear simply to be a pair of mates in two moves: 1 Kf6 and 1 e3. However, Michael McDowell (Westcliff-on-sea, England) writes:

‘The solution to Marble’s problem is 1 Kf6 f1(white N) 2 Ne3, 1...f1(white Q or B) 2 Qc2 (or, alternatively, 2 Qxe1 in the former case), or 1...f1(white R) 2 Rxe1. 1 e3 fails to 1...f1(white N) because the mating square is now blocked.

The story was reprinted on pages 28-31 of Flights of Fancy in the Chess World by A.C. White (Leeds, 1919), with the solution on page 143. Acknowledgement for research information: the Library of the British Chess Problem Society.’

(5306, 5325 & 5329)

Mark N. Taylor (Mt Berry, GA, USA) points out the dust-jacket of a the novel The Star of India by Carole Buggé (Gordonsville, 1998):

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