Nancy B.

Thank you for the inquiry. James Schroeder usually gets the books directly from Dover. He does not have email so please contact him by phone or mail:

James Schroeder
3011 E. 9th St.
Apt. #15
Vancouver, WA 98661

phone (360) 258-9401

Reuben Fine, The World’s Greatest Chess Games

Siegbert Tarrasch, The Game of Chess

Edward Lasker, Chess for Fun and Chess for Blood

2. Are they new, unused books?

Thank you

Robert

“Tarrasch said he had only three words to say to Lasker, ‘check and mate’.”

It doesn’t talk about Tarrasch announcing that he had *a list of only two words* for Lasker. He said he had *two words*.

“Check and mate,” the non-condensed version of the expression checkmate, is obviously a three-word phrase.

Ben

Anyway, as long as such story is presented just like that, as a story, I think there’s no fault in repeating it. Books should be written in a fashion that make them good reads, and a good story comes handy for this purpose.

How did Soltis relate the episode? As one of those “the story goes…” bits or as a veritable historical fact?

Be that as it may, “check and mate” is a phrase made of THREE words indeed, not two. “Check” is a noun and so is “mate”. As for “and”, that’s a conjunction. And the three of them are words, what else? Nouns and conjecntions are all words, just different classes of words. The anecdote is about three words, and no more than them, that Tarrasch had for Lasker. *Words*, not *nouns*.

Also, I don’t grasp the rationale in calling Soltis insultingly ignorant just because he kept referring to Steinitz by his birth name, Wilhelm.

The first world champion at some point changed his name into William, okay. So what? William is just the English version of Wilhelm, and such change is a fairly minor matter of formality. By the way, almost everyone knows the Austrian-American player as Wilhelm Steinitz, almost an household name in the chess world, not William Steinitz. I guess Soltis just wanted to be consistent when naming names.

With every good wish,

Ben