Okay we all agree on that.

But I think I have discovered the source of the pun! There is a street in London called Pall Mall. It runs from Trafalgar Square along to St James's Palace. It is home to many Gentlemen's Clubs and to the Supreme Council 33°.

It would seem to me that Pall Mall has a different pronunciation in England to in America. We pronounce it as if both words had one L: Pal Mal, very quick.

21 ... Bd7 seems to be the lemon. Consistent with the plan, but overlooking 23 Qd2 with the deep double attack against d7/h6 (easier to miss than you think, especially if you thought the threats were just both queen captures: BxN seems to cover Qxh6 just fine, right? Except Rxh6 is also threatened, when the Knight isn't needed because the Queen will come just in time to cover g7).

A different move would have held out longer and judging by the Rybka analysis earlier in this thread, perhaps have staved off loss, though fighting on at even -1.5 against Morphy is a pretty depressing idea.

On the other hand, the Stockfish analysis of one of the draws in this same simul indicates that Morphy had just such an advantage at one point and blew it (it's probably heresy in the chess community, but Morphy was good but not really AS good as he's usually lionized as. He likely benefited from the infancy of theory at the time, a feeling not too different from the one I often get in the video game world, where also being "good but not perfect" has developed a distinctly meh nature as analysis finds the One True Way for what often feels like everything, save for mainly cases where chance borders on entirely overpowering skill).