I was thrilled to read that the US Chess League had its first week of matches last Wednesday night. If ever there were a first sentence to make 80% of you skip on to the next post, that might be it; the rest of you, who indulge my passion for vicarious chess geekery, may ( enjoy reading more. )

( A recap of Saturday 16th October at the World Puzzle Championship and the rest of the running gags from the week. )

1156: It's the big one, it's for all the marbles and indeed the cliché stops here. Down to the final three after two-and-a-third days of puzzles, with the 13th World Puzzle Championship title up for grabs. Your competitors are Niels Roest, 2002 champion, Ulrich Voigt, 2000/2001/2003 champion, and Roger Barkan, who won the US Qualifying Test this ( Read more... )

( Minute-by-minute account of the World Puzzle Championship semi-finals. Good stuff here, honestly, but quite a lot of it. )

Ley (2) v Gaspar (8) v Uppelschuten (12) : Ley 2 v Gaspar 2 v Uppelschuten 1
Barkan (4) v Calver (6) v Madarassy (10) : Barkan 2 v Calver 2 v Madarassy 2
Horvath (3) v Roest (9) v Osvalt (13) : Horvath 2 v Roest 3 v Osvalt 2
Huang (5) v Leroy (7) v Ito (11) : Huang 2 v Leroy 3 v Ito 1( Minute-by-minute report of the quarterfinals. Long enough that it would be obnoxious not to lj-cut it. )

Here are the most relevant of the Official results of the first two days of the World Puzzle Championship. I present the top thirteen and selected others among the 90 contestants:
1. Ulrich Voigt GER 1034 ( Read more... )

The previous three posts are placeholders no longer; have pasted in the longer entries I had written at the time, so go back and look at them if you're interested. Will write up today's report at my leisure and post it in once written. In short, all puzzles over except for the top 13 who go into the play-offs tomorrow. Last we saw had Britain in ( Read more... )

Choices for Internet access here are either pay-per-minute at 1 Kn for three minutes (about 9p) or 100 Kn for presumably an hour and a half, but the pay-per-minute option isn't letting us use our pre-typed blog reports. Accordingly it's looking like another placeholder until we have an uninterrupted block of 90 minutes for prime time Internet ( Read more... )

Once more I have written a long entry and once more I have not had the chance to post it. They're keeping us busy here, in a good way. :-) Puzzles start tomorrow and I am off to bed now at a reasonable hour but just to leave you with a little teaser, what is the connection between KAT, LEVEL, STOCK and PIANO and where might you expect to see them ( Read more... )

Have arrived happily and safely in Croatia. This hotel has Internet access, sort of, but it's complicated. Have written a longer entry which I hope to get to post tomorrow. Love you loads and loads, dezzikitty. Croatian PCs have a German(?) keyboard which swaps "y"s and "z"s so typing Meg's username is particularly fun. :-)

Hello from Opatija! The UK team ( Read more... )