Musings on chess, and lesser things
A warm welcome to our first guest blogger, Andrew ‘Fitzy’ Fitzpatrick, who reports on a week of New Zealand misadventures. Heading to NZ before the zonal was going to mean a heavy schedule of touristing and socialising before settling down and playing a serious chess tournament….In reality the two are probably the wrong way around, …
Unfortunately, things have not gone according to plan. It all started going downhill when I was asked to do the toss for colours, breaking with the tradition of the top seed doing the coin toss. I usually lose coin tosses, so I was very excited to win – until I discovered this meant that top-seed …
A ten day tour of the north island of New Zealand has kept me offline for far too long. But never fear, dear reader, for this week sees the 2011 Oceania Chess Championships, complete with regular blogging, vindictive ranting, glorious narcissistic boasting and depressive self-musing. Not to mention some guest-blogging from my fellow chess Contikians, …
The 2011 Australian Open Chess Championships are set to go right down to the wire in the final round tomorrow, with five players poised with one hand on the cup. Top seed Zhong-Yuan ‘Zongie’ Zhao and Mouthun ‘Bullet’ Ly have a tighter grip than the others, and will face off on board one knowing that …
January is a difficult time for making decisions for many Australians, and not just for New Year’s resolutions. It is also a frenzied month of voting for national radio station Triple J’s Hottest 100 countdown of the top songs of the year, released on Australia Day on January 26. It’s something of a tradition on …
And here they are: the best of the best from what was most likely the first ever chess haiku competition. Points were awarded for the first two; the others were awarded virtual pride. Checkered battlefield; Sweet victory or despair, By one deadly move! – Justin Tan Chess is a great wife: She feeds me …
Well, my prediction that most of you would struggle to fifty per cent was deplorably off – you all did remarkably well, and my efforts to displace Google have failed. Next year I’ll do better, including such improved questions as “What number am I thinking of now?” Congratulations to Ian Rogers and Tristan Stevens who …
So clearly I couldn’t decide on a title. As Fitzy has correctly pointed out in the comments, I am on a farm in Darwin and have limited access to civilisation. Rather than blogging, my days have been spent cleaning chicken and peacock poo, grooming horses, cuttng bamboo, and killing cane toads. (Literally, not state-of-origin-metaphorically, of …
My hearty congratulations on a fantastic effort by you all in the quiz. Some very good answer sheets, some very humourous guesses, and some very bizarre Haikus. Well done to you all. The deadline has passed, submissions have closed, and I’ll get marking as soon as possible. It would appear that my attempts to produce a …
There’s been a cracking interest in the Quiz, which is surprising. From most of the reports I’ve gotten, it seems my questions were unfortunately very much ‘Google-able’. A shame. However, some of the questions at least (such as the herb on my balcony) seem to have been particularly tricky. I have no regrets. Kudos to …