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We start with Tweet of the month:  
It comes from chess GM Hikaru, purporting to be from his chess team, and posted by his trainer. Hikaru is American of Japanese family and has his own unique sense of humour.
"This is Hikaru’s Second. No stream today because Hikaru is not allowed to play internet games until he finishes his daily workout - he needs to do 1,000 rook lifts, 1,000 knight forks, 1,000 bishop snipes, and 1,000 en passants. It doesn’t look like he’ll finish his daily workout before Bullet Brawl - maybe Tuesday he’ll finish his workout in time for Titled Tuesday. Signed, Team Mysterio".
[Original post read 1,000 en peasants, which is also funny but I’ve amended it, to its intended chess meaning, I hope. TR.]

@McRory_1878
500 horses run at Cheltenham, 28 go on to win, my bets will be placed on some of the other 472.

@deelomas
Philosophers have spoken about what it is to be human. Some have said it’s our ability to love, others that it is our consciousness. Turns out they are wrong. 
It’s our ability to tick all the boxes with a motorcycle in them…

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Like Littler, teenage phenomenon, is already competing with the best darts players in the world. I can see his development with similarities to that of a young chess phenomenon heading for super grandmaster status.

Darts, like chess, calls for high concentration levels. A drop in micro-concentration can lose a match in these and other sports where a momentary loss of concentration can bring the contest to an abrupt end. 

In training and watching young chess players, I have seen evidence of that concentration lapse, without which the player would be on a par with far more experienced players. In chess this seems often to occur well into a game, and the result of which is an obvious blunder which can lead to immediate resignation ...

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The big freeze. The double Houdini that failed. 

This podcast is not so much about chess, as about the eternal human challenge of overcoming adversity. My story starts with a message to members from the East Cheadle Chess Club Mission Control. It  sent a chilly warning to the fearless band of the limitless potential league warriors. 

It read 
"Please be aware that the heating system at the Institute is being replaced, and for this week (and possibly next week) it will be non-operational.  There will be some stand-alone heaters, but the temperature will be a little lower than normal.  So please come dressed appropriately!" ...

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The golden age of detective stories and the locked room puzzle.

Comments about the golden age of detective stories, tell of the domination of Agatha Christie, and before her, Arthur Conan Doyle and even earlier, Edgar Allen Poe. More specifically, the golden age is placed approximately between the two Great world wars, 1920 to 1938.

One particular sub-variant is the locked room mystery. In this, the crime, usually murder, is committed in a way that appears impossible to the reader. Arguably Agatha Christie could be put forward inevitably for her mastery of this genre as well as of her more familiar classics.

 I became acquainted with the work of the locked room authors recently through The White Priory Murders by John Dickson Carr writing under the name of Carter Dickson, 
and The Moving Toyshop, by Robert Montgomery, writing under the name of Edmund Crispin ...

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Every chess player knows chess is complex. Most chess players have a sense of just how complex. It has even been suggested there are more moves theoretically in chess than there are atoms in the universe.

Don’t be deterred. The reality is beautifully described by Stephen Westland on the discussion website Quora. He also happens to be an interesting academic and professor in colour science at the school of design at the university of Leeds.
I’m borrowing from Stephen’s calculations on Quora For what follows, with more about a position which came up recently at one of our league games,

First, he uses a real life example I show below.  It’s so real life it is close to a position I saw in one of our the matches played recently. Maybe someone reading this remembers it ...

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John O Connell responds to journalist’s jibe at Taylor Swift
@jdpoc
"I wouldn't date Taylor Swift" says @GB NEWS' Eamonn Holmes.
On the same lines, I refuse to buy that new Maserati.
And I've turned down the James Bond role, again.
And playing upfront for England in the next World Cup? Nah. Can't be bothered.
@PaulTempleton6
BREAKING: Taylor Swift denies stalking  Eamonn Holmes.

@krassenstein
Reporter to President Biden:
"Who has the better chance in November?  Nikki Haley or Donald Trump?"

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An Incident at Waitrose

That’s the Waitrose in Poynton near to where I live. I was making a routine shopping visit there this morning. Not quite routine, because I am in search of a low-carb diet, as instructed by diabetes Zoe recently.
I had vague ideas of browsing for low-carb suggestions to replace my favoured meals or at least replace some of the potatoes, rice, and spaghetti components of them.
Poynton has a reputation for its death-trap roundabout, only equalled in the northern territories of England by the spectacularly dangerous ring road around nearby Urmston, which regularly risks the lives of visiting Chess teams and other would-be participants in its Urban delights.
The Poynton roundabout is the product of creative thinking run amok. It works on the principle of creating such a dangerous situation that motorists, cyclists and pedestrians alike take the utmost precautions as they pass through it.
Safely through, I am aware of traffic stretching ahead of me to the entrance of the Waitrose car park. My concern of a long delay proved justified, in the crawl along the High Street and eventually into a car park missing one essential feature, vacent parking spaces ...

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Mental set.  Two words that could revolutionise criminal detection

Sunday Standard. July 5, 1981

In what follows, the original newspaper article mentions that it was based on an interview about a report I had  written with restrictions to its publication by the Government department which had commissioned it.  I no longer have a copy of the report. It focuses on the recently-solved case of what had become known as the Yorkshire Ripper murders. It discusses the nature of mental blinkers or set and proposes ways of reducing its sometimes serious consequences.

Ironically, it also demonstrates in an unintentional way my own crushingly-obvious mental set in hindsight. Throughout ,my language implies my perceptions as treating  social actors as male: doctors are male, managers are male, lost toddlers are male, parents, searching for lost toddlers, are male, and so on.
 I stand rightly convicted of carrying with me a dominant mental set, the focus of the report, and which influenced my thinking and writing at the time.

The terminology of mental set was overtaken by the term mind-set in the professional and scholarly domains. By the late 1990s, it had been replaced in my work which had become increasingly influenced by my work colleague and life partner Susan Moger. Susan also did a good job reminding me if I strayed into my earlier male-dominated mental assumptions.  

The audio is the extended interview published in the Scottish newspaper The Sunday Standard. 

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Wit and wisdom Mid February edition

@GOLDCOUNCIL
When the unexpected happens and the world is in turmoil, with gold, you could be protected.
65 million hits.

@deelomas
I just saw this bloke going up a hill with a wheelbarrow full of horseshoes, four leaf clovers and rabbits feet. 
Me
Nicely crafted. I’m beginning to see how your twisted mind works.

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How Neil Kinnock is helping Keir Starmer to win the next General Election. The results of the by-elections at Wellingborough and Kingswood recently have been hailed as stunning victories for the labour opposition. They widely believed to be an indicator of a substantial win for labour at the next general election, expected later this year. 

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