Like just about everyone else in the world, I have turned (actually re-turned) to the game of chess this winter, partly in the wake of the popularity of The Queen's Gambit , but also just because it's winter, it's COVID, and it was bound to happen eventually. I go through a chess phase about every two years. I play on the Chess.com app, which allows you to play millions of players from around the world, and to play games in which you get anywhere from seven days to one minute to make moves. I used to favor the games in which you get 24-hours to make your move. But bullet chess is my latest obsession. Basically, bullet chess games are lighting fast matches in which you get one (1) minute to make your moves. No, not one minute to make each move, but one minute to make all your moves. As in, you start with the clock at 1:00, and then, if it takes you 10 seconds to make your first move, you have only 0:50 seconds to work with after that. It is the game of chess compressed and
Review of the short story from the Dec. 7, 2020 issue of The New Yorker... Paul Theroux -- American travel writer and novelist, author of The Mosquito Coast , among many other works -- used to write about traveling, adventuring, and romancing in far-flung locations. Now he's writing about kindly old men sitting on their porches, telling stories to the neighborhood children. Time catches up with us all. In "Dietrologia," an old Italian man living in Hawaii, Sal Frezzolini, sits and talks to a group of local kids who live in his neighborhood, discussing with them various episodes from his life that he struggles to understand. The kids don't really, fully understand either, but for a different reason: they're kids. They mostly marvel at how old Sal is and await the chance to get cookies from his cookie jar. Meanwhile, Sal is at conflict with his wife about the fact they must soon relocate into a smaller home, more suitable to people in their waning years. Not exact