Fianchetto

In chess, the fianchetto, ‘little flank’ in Italian, is a pattern of development wherein a bishop is developed to the second rank of the adjacent knight file, the knight pawn having been moved one or two squares forward.

The fianchetto is a staple of many hypermodern openings, whose philosophy is to delay direct occupation of the centre with the plan of undermining and destroying the opponent’s central outpost.

One of the major benefits of the fianchetto is that it often allows the fianchettoed bishop to become more active. Because the bishop is placed on a long diagonal, it controls a lot of squares and can become a powerful offensive weapon.

However, a fianchettoed position also presents some opportunities for the opposing player: if the fianchettoed bishop can be exchanged, the squares the bishop was formerly protecting will become weak and can form the basis of an attack. Therefore, exchanging the fianchettoed bishop should not be done lightly, especially if the enemy bishop of the same colour is still on the board.

‘Strictly speaking, fianchetto is a noun – a diminutive of an Italian word meaning wing or flank – but the English have long misused it as a verb. The true pedant, however, will always refer to a ‘bishop in fianchetto’, and never a ‘fianchettoed bishop’.’

- Hartston. B. 1997. Better Chess London, United Kingdom: Hodder Headline (2004) p. 26

Incongruity Theory

‘The incongruity theory was described rather badly by Immanuel Kant in 1790 when he said that laughter ‘is an affectation arising from the sudden transformation of strained expectation into nothing’. His grouchy compatriot Schopenhauer later elaborated on this, defining humour as ‘the incongruity between a concept and the real object to which it was to relate’. And what hilarious gag did Arthur Schopenhauer put forward to support his theory? ‘… for example, the amusing look of the angle formed by the meeting of the tangent and the curve of the circle’. Yes, Frankfurt positively rocked with laughter in the 1840s – the golden age of German comedy.

“Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
- George Burns

The set-up of a joke creates a scenario with an assumed conclusion; the punchline provides quite a different conclusion, which subverts your previously held assumptions about the joke scenario. [...] For example:

How do you make a dog drink?
Put him in a blender.

[...] It’s not just the words that make the joke work. The best jokes use language with skill and economy to conjure up mental pictures which are hilarious by virtue of their incongruity, shock value, or just sheer silliness. Here’s a lovely one:

Two monkeys are having a bath. One of them turns to the other and says, ‘Oo oo ah ah!’ The other replies, ‘Well, put the cold tap on, then.’

It’s clear that even the shortest one-liner can be prodded and poked and analysed until an inch of its life [...].’

- Carr J., Greeves L. 2006. The Naked Jape – Uncovering The Hidden World Of Jokes London, Great Britain: Penguin Books (2007) p. 92-93

Advanced Mistakes (i)

Source: Swan. M. 2005. Practical English Usage Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press (2011).

Practical English Usage lists over a hundred common mistakes in the English language. Even advanced students of English make mistakes. Swan (2005) has listed a number of them.

“I’ll ask you in case I need help.” = I’ll ask you if I need help.
(271.3) In case and if are normally used in quite different ways. ‘Do A in case B happens’ means ‘Do A (first) because B might happen later’. ‘Do A if B happens’ means ‘Do A if B has already happened’.

“I object to tell them my age.” = I object to telling them my age.
(298.2) To is actually two different words. It can be an infinitive marker, used to show that the next word is an infinitive (e.g. to swim, to laugh). It can also be a preposition, followed for example by a noun (e.g. She’s gone to the park, I look forward to Christmas). (298.1) When we put a verb after preposition, we normally use an -ing form (‘gerund’), not an infinitive.

“I like the 60s music.” = I like the music of the 60s. / … 60s music.
(69.3) Some expressions are ‘half-general’- in the middle between general and particular.

“ten thousand, a hundred and six.” = ten thousand, one hundred and six.
(389.11) We can say an eighth or one eighth, a hundred or one hundred, a thousand or one thousand, a million or one million, etc. One is more formal. A can only be used at the beginning of a number.

“‘Who’s that?’ – ‘He’s John.’” = ‘Who’s that?’ – ‘It’s John.’
(428.9) We use it for a person when we are identifying him or her.

“I don’t like to be shouted.” = I don’t like to be shouted at.
(416.1) The objects of prepositional verbs can become subjects in passive structures. We have looked at the plan carefully. – The plan has been carefully looked at. Note the word order. The preposition cannot be dropped.

“It’s ages since she’s arrived.” = It’s ages since she arrived.
(522.2) In British English, present and past tenses are common in the structure It is / was … since …

“The police is looking for him.” = The police are looking for him.
(524.7) Cattle is a plural word used to talk collectively about bulls, cows and calves; it has no singular, and cannot be used for counting individual animals. Police, staff and crew are generally used in the same way.

Superiority Theory

‘The superiority theory implies that the point of joking is to feel better about our sorry selves by mocking people or situations we find ridiculous. This is probably the oldest attempt to explain what’s going on when we tell jokes, dating back at least as far as Aristotle, who called humour ‘educated insolence’.

Seventeenth century stand-up Thomas Hobbes thought that laughter was ‘nothing else but a sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others’. Later refinements of the theory suggest that we also gain some psychological comfort from laughing at people who we purport to be ridiculous, but secretly hate and fear.

The superiority idea was revisited by Henri Bergson in his famous 1900 essay ‘Laughter and the meaning of the Comic’. He thought that in making a joke or at laughing at one we are experiencing a spontaneous failure of empathy: the situations which strike us as comic are those that enable us to see a human being as somehow mechanical, as less than human. For Bergson, joking had a social purpose: to ridicule eccentricity, thus brushing aside any untidy idiosyncrasies and weaknesses which might otherwise constitute triphazards on the pathway of society.

More recently, Charles R. Gruner has developed a new superiority theory which reads joking as a playful game, but one with clear winners and losers. Finding the winner and loser isn’t always simple. Often, the joke-teller ‘wins’ and the audience ‘loses’ – for example, in the case of a riddle where the teller’s intention is to leave his audience stumped. Even simple puns can be seen as expressions of superiority according to this reading, since the punner intends to prove himself intellectually superior to his audience.

“I used to think that the brain was the greatest organ in human body, then I realized ‘Hey! Look what’s telling me that!’”
- Emo Philips

Other jokes have a clearer butt – an Irishman, a lawyer or some other hapless (deserving?) victim – and joke-teller and audience both ‘win’ at the expense of the character in the joke.’

“You cannot have everything. I mean, where would you put it?”
- Steve Wright

- Carr J., Greeves L. 2006. The Naked Jape – Uncovering The Hidden World Of Jokes London, Great Britain: Penguin Books (2007) p. 89-90

Opening Principles of Chess

These general opening principles in chess can be followed to play a solid game in the opening stage of the game:

1. Control the centre.
2. Develop knights before bishops.
3. Never move a piece twice.
4. Develop both knights before the queen bishop.
5. Do not bring out the queen too early.
6. Do not develop exclusively on one side of the board.
7. Castle sooner than later – remember the king’s safety.
8. Clear the back rank (except king and rooks) and connect both rooks.
9. Do not permit the opponent to open a file on your king after castling.
10. Rooks belong on open files.
11. Avoid exchanging bishops for knights early on.
12. Avoid premature attacks – sometimes the threat is more powerful than the capture.
13. Always try to realise your plan while preventing your opponent from realising his.

However, every chess player must remember there can be no mechanical thinking in chess. This means the above principles cannot be followed regardless of the other player’s moves. It is for this very reason some chess masters do not care for opening principles:

‘Note that I propose a few principles rather than provide a whole list of outmoded opening do’s and dont’s. I feel that such a list inhibits creativity in the opening, and inhibits beginners to play like automatons, almost never deviating from the Giuoco Piano. [...]

Strong players will not always adhere to the standard principles – but they will have a reason if they do not. Indeed the real sign of a great player is the willingness to go against tradition, and play strictly in accordance with the specific position, whether this means sacrificing material, accepting horrific weaknesses, or whatever.

How to Survive the Opening

1. Make only as many pawn moves as are necessary to develop your pieces.
2. Put all your pieces on active squares as soon as possible.
3. Arrange your pieces and pawns so that your pieces are not exposed to attack.
4. Do not waste any time.

What Constitutes a “Good” Opening

1. It must not lose by force.
2. It should not involve too much simplification.
3. It should be reasonably promising.’

- Burgess. G. 2002. Chess Tactics and Strategy New Jersey, United States: Castle Books (1997) p. 110-111

Playing in Blinkers

‘The Finnish psychologist Pertti Saariluoma has identified a remarkably common source of error in chess thought. In simple terms, it happens when you become so fixated on one move or variation that it produces an inhibiting effect on all other thoughts. You start thinking about a temping rook move advancing down a file, and you overlook a more powerful retreat; you are so proud of one piece powerfully established on a strong square that you miss the chance to force a simple win with a sequence beginning with its exchange for a passively placed enemy piece.

These common errors are all connected with the way we perceive chess positions. With up to 32 pieces scattered over 64 squares, and our poor brains generally incapable of juggling more than seven items at the same time, we need to codify the pieces into meaningful subsets. We don’t think in terms of discrete pieces on their individual squares., but instead understand a position in terms of the relationships between groups of pieces. The trouble is that such a process is liable to lock us into particular mind-sets. When, for example, we have a queen and a bishop on the same diagonal, their relationship exerts such a pull on our thoughts that it can blind us to possible moves of the queen or bishop on the diagonals.

The only solution – though difficult to put into practice – is to train yourself to look again at each move of a variation in a fresh and naïve manner. Somehow, you have to put your previous thoughts aside and clear a path in your mind to let radically new ideas come through.’

- Hartston. B. 1997. Better Chess London, United Kingdom: Hodder Headline (2004) p. 72

Flying Mammal

‘They [bats] are the only mammal to sprout wings and fly, opening up a whole new world of habitats and food sources. Their order name Chiroptera means ‘hand wing’, and their wings remain recognisable as hands, with a thumb and four fingers. If ours grew to match them, it would be almost 7 feet long and thinner than knitting needles. [...]

Vampire bats (Desmodus Rotundus) feed mainly on cattle, horses, tapirs and turkeys. If they do dine on humans, they usually go for the big toe, not the neck, but can only manage two table-spoons at one sitting. They are the only mammals that feed exclusively on blood.’

- Lloyd. J., Mitchinson. J. 2007. The QI Book of Animals London, Great Britain: Faber and Faber (2009) p. 14-15

Intermediate Mistakes (iv)

Source: Swan. M. 2005. Practical English Usage Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press (2011).

Practical English Usage lists over a hundred common mistakes in the English language. Listed below are a number of mistakes that intermediate students of English often make according to Swan (2005).

“He’s married with a doctor.” = He’s married to a doctor.
(499) The most common combination is: marriage to; get/be married to (not with).

“Can you mend this until Tuesday?” = Can you mend this by Tuesday?
(602.6) We use until to talk about a situation or state that will continue up to a certain moment. We use by to say that an action or event will happen at or before a future moment. (117.1) By can mean ‘no later than’. Compare: I’ll be home by five o’clock. (= at or before five).

“There’s a hotel in front of our house.” = There’s a hotel opposite our house.
(401) We put the adjective opposite before a noun when we are talking about one of a pair of things that naturally face or contrast with each other.

“I like warm countries, as Spain.” = I like warm countries, like Spain.
(326.1) We can use like or as to say that things are similar. Like can be a preposition. We use like, not as, before a noun or pronoun to talk about similarity. Compare: like + noun/pronoun.

“Please explain me what you want.” = Please explain to me what you want.
(198) After explain, we use to before an indirect object.

“When you come take your bike.” = When you come, bring your bike.
(112.1) We use bring for movements to the place where the speaker or hearer is, but we use take for movements to other places.

“My brother has got a new work.” = My brother has got a new job.
(148.3) Work is an uncountable noun, whereas job is a countable noun. (66.1) We do not normally use an indefinite article with plural and uncountable nouns.

“He’s Dutch, or better Belgian.” = He’s Dutch, or rather Belgian.
(491.4) People often use or rather to correct themselves.

Woodland Aristocrat

‘The parallels with the British upper classes are striking: badgers are stubborn creatures of habit; some of their setts, and some of the paths or ‘runs’ that lead to them, are centuries old, handed down from generation to generation like stately homes. The largest sett ever found was a veritable Blenheim Palace with more than 130 entrances, fifty rooms and half a mile of tunnels. Seventy tons of earth had been moved to make it. Most setts house a group of up to twenty adult badgers, known as a ‘clan’, and they will spend half their lives inside it, fast asleep. [...]

Badgers can mate at any time of year, and sex can last for up to ninety minutes. The sow will mate with several different boars, holding all the fertilised eggs until she gives birth to a multi-fathered litter in early spring. [...]

The origin of the word ‘badger’ is uncertain, but the best guess is the French bêcher, meaning ‘to dig’. The French call them blaireau, a word they also use for ‘shaving-brush’, and ‘tourist’.’

- Lloyd. J., Mitchinson. J. 2007. The QI Book of Animals London, Great Britain: Faber and Faber (2009) p. 12-13