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Oct 1, 2001

This week's theme
Words from chess

This week's words
zugzwang
checkmate
gambit
stalemate
endgame

Previous week’s theme
Verbs

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An Italian proverb goes, "After the game, the king and pawn go into the same box." A world in itself, chess mimics life in more ways than one. While quite simple on the surface, its complexity is mind-boggling. There are more than 10¹²⁰ possible moves (that's number 1 followed by 120 zeros). That is a fairly large number once we realize that there are only about 10⁷⁵ atoms in this universe.

It attests to the popularity of the game that many of the chess words have entered our mainstream vocabulary. This week we explore five of them.

zugzwang

noun: A position where one is forced to make an undesirable move.

[From German Zugzwang, Zug (move) + Zwang (compulsion, obligation).]

"Now the government finds itself in zugzwang, where every move it makes worsens its position against an invisible opponent."
Pusch Commey; Is the Rand Racially Prejudiced?; African Business (London, UK); Mar 2001.

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