Ta. There are some real personal faves in there, ones so simple that I feel like I should have known them all my life. Such as:

2. 'In painting and poetry the workers scorn analysis, and the best work defies it, and, so far as chess is capable of analysis, it is neither art nor play.'

John Ruskin (1885)

20. 'My own enthusiasms are numerous and mostly long-rooted. Like other people's, some grow greater with the passage of time, and some recede, though some which appear to have vanished are only lying dormant; I used, for instance, to play a lot of chess when I was young - it was indeed a passionate enthusiasm - and have only played a handful of games these years past, but whenever I have taken the pieces out I have instantly felt all the old excitement and pleasure, the eagerness to start and enjoy.'

Bernard Levin (1983)

47. ‘'The artistic conscience sometimes makes him who has it a coward - or, let us say, a Hamlet of the chess board.

I wonder if Hamlet was a chessplayer. From his character it seems indeed likely. If he was, he probably played a weak but imaginative game, with a craving to improve upon the best move and therefore often missing it.

Hamlets of the chess board are frequent types. Once in the meshes of combination they lose themselves in its intricacies, and evolve ideas that are so infinitely subtle that they have no vitality. Then is the moment when fate, usually with a somewhat brutal, matter-of-fact blow, wakes them out of it.'

Emanuel Lasker (1907)

60. ‘Playing chess is like illness, a lonely experience.’

Ron Atkin

67: ‘To join a chess club is, for any young amateur who is inclined to fancy himself, the quickest way of reducing self-conceit, as it may also prove an object-lesson in the external effects of excessive devotion to the sixty-four black and white squares.'

The Times (1922)

71. 'What have I learned from this? I have come to the conclusion you need more intelligence for chess than politics. You need to apply yourself every hour of every day to achieve the type of genius he has.'

Jim Callaghan after losing in a simul to Garry Kasparov (1993)

72. 'Chess is a game where the most intense mental activity leaves no traces.'

Man Ray

85. 'In mathematics you're as good as your best move. In chess you're as bad as your worst.'

Norbert Wiener

90. 'The world will go on more smoothly if the chess-players, fit though few, will recognize that there are indeed persons in the world for whom their ancient and noble game is too high and hard.'

The Times (1927)

Not to mention the George Steiner stuff as well.

By the way, do remind me to email you that John Caroll article from a few quotations have come from ('In spite of intellectuals'); it should be ideal for your Duchamp extravanganza.

I agree with you about HG's columns, but I'm not sure about the book idea. That's Gutenberg Ghetto thinking: the assumption that something isn't valid until it appears in book form. Maybe we just need more hyperlinks or a Golombek website...

As for club chess, I was never very successful at it, back in the day. I once calculated that my rating would be 150 points higher if club games were excluded. I had this habit of getting a won position, getting bored, and allowing a mate in one or dropping my queen.

I posted a game in my forum. Would you look at it if you get a chance?

It's the first time EVER that I beat someone over 2000 on Yahoo.

the game took around 3 hours to play.

Regards,
Missing my OTB club somethin' fierce

Counting outwards from the sun, I'm currently on the 3rd planet. It's kinda blue... well, actually more black, as I'm on the dark side, near the terminator.

I thought I was about to notch up my first win against a 2000+ on Gameknot. Then I noticed she had a perpetual. Now it looks as if I'm about to LOSE **&%#@!

< ... the computer generation which doesn't ... > American Emglish.

BTW, the Associated Press Style Manual was my bible back in my all-seeing world. Does your style manual allow for a space on each side of the three-dot ellipsis?

I went to Google-Wikipedia for a better understanding of collective nouns. The Wikipedia on that subject has got to be the worst bit of expository writing ever foisted on mankind.

And I think they all have subtly different meanings, too, but don't ask me what. I'm a punctuation artist ... I go by instinct.

btw, I used the word 'documentarist' in an article the other day. My editor phones and flatly says that there is no such word. Suppressing the urge to say 'yes there is', I timidly replied 'well, it's in use, I've seen it used'. By now we were both stalling while we checked our dictionaries...

'It's in Chambers', I announced. 'Hmm', he said, 'it's in the online dictionary too. But its first usage was in 1949. We stay with the older, familiar words -- say "documentary maker" instead.'

'Sure', I replied. 'So what's the approved pre-1949 term for "website designer"?'

Thanks for finally <giving me a prize>.

Was it because I kept typing "do I win a prize" over and over till you just wanted to strangle me?

I'm having fun playing Correspondence again over at <letsplaychess.com>.

It's quite a "gear" site.

Regards,
<Ringo Starr> (not deceased yet)

This, of course, is an acronym for 'Wives And Girlfriends' - mainly in the context of football teams, and whether Liverpool FC and Manchester Utd should put the players' WAGs on the payroll for all the voluntary work they do, selflessly appearing in gossip columns day after day, standing by their man, or men, or whatever, like.

Wayne Rooney and his delightful WAG/fiancee Colleen is the creme de la creme among soccer avant-gardeners, as it were. She currently sports a flouncy retro-Farrah-Fawcett "hairdue" (as we call 'em in chess circles: cf Jan Timman's old perm, thought to be still playing in the Dutch 3rd division).

Paul McCartney, however, died in the 1960s because he was barefoot on Abbey Road, an allusion to Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Not many people can say "Say it ain't so, Joe" in Tibetan. And even if they could, the freedom-loving Chinese government, champion of minority languages everywhere -- they do great work for Gaelic, in secret, as demonstrated by the proliferation of Irish-speaking Maoist knitting circles -- has made it illegal.

Just up the road from you, aren't they? Hmm. They're all good people, and some of them are quite young, and rather handsome as gerontocrats go.

The money should go direct to the lawyers to pay for Paul's divorce. Beatle money should never be used for WAGimony.

<singed>

Mea culpa.