Tuesday 23 August 2011

Read: The Yiddish Policeman's Union (Part I)

24 hours remain to complete last week's quiz.

I'm afraid that my Saturday sickness cut severely into my reading time for this week. One of the books that I have read earlier in the year that I'd hoped to review here was Michael Chambon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union. But my Monday night movie education has left me with little time, so I'll leave you instead with the central motif of the book, a cunning little chess problem set by the victim of the murder (by way of Victor Nabokov), and come back later in the week to do the rest of the review, hopefully giving me enough time to finish up Neuromancer before next week.

White to mate in two. I do think it's a beautiful little thing.

3 comments:

James Picone said...

Qc5+ d5
b8->Q

looks like a solution to me, but I can't believe this only has one. I do remember seeing a chess problem once where basically any legal sequence of moves was a solution, but this one's clearly not it, given the number of ways to not-quite make it (see, for example, Bxg7+ Bxg7 Rxg5 Kd6)

UnwiseOwl said...

I'm afraid that's not legal, because moving d5 pins the b7 pawn against the king due to the position of the black rook.

James Picone said...

You are, of course, correct. My mistake, definitely.

Hmmm... still can't see the solution out of hand. I see a whole bunch of three-turn mates, but no two-turns...