It’s your move
Posted April 22 2007
Did Sherlock Holmes play chess?
The only clue lies in his remark about a suspect: “Amberley excelled at chess — one mark, Watson, of a scheming mind.”
Despite this dim view of the game, chess buffs continue to claim this great sleuth as our own. For example, in an article called “The Hoax of his Career,” Thomas Hailey maintains that the master of disguise assumed the alias of Harry Nelson Pillsbury, an unknown 22-year-old American genius who clobbered the world’s best in his debut at Hastings 1895.
After all, didn’t Pillsbury have a prodigious memory, a prominent nose, hollowed cheek bones and piercing eyes? “Finally, he wearied as an active chessplayer and so Sherlock killed off Pillsbury in a fake death in 1906 and retired from the detection arena to bee raising in Sussex,” wrote Hailey with tongue firmly planted in his cheek.
Here is the full article.
Of course Sherlock Holmes played chess! Anyone who has any doubt about this should merely check out Raymond Smullyan’s delightful book entitled: The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes 50 Tantalizing Problems of Chess Detection (Alfred A. Knopf 1979).
I can find no reference of Holmes playing chess (or knows how to) in any of Conan Doyle’s works. I’m a fan of both Sherlock Holmes and chess, but other than hinting that he might know something about it when he he remarked about Moriarty’s playing skills (“excellence in chess is the mark of a scheming mind”), I can find no other.
By the way, my favorite case is the Valley of Fear…
Of course he played chess!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSsS16wnsSE
Sherlock Homes is a chess game. He played the game very well.