Backwards into chess

Press, 26 July 1980, Page 17

Backwards into chess

The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes. By Raymond Smullyan. Hutchinson, 1980. 171 pp. $11.50. (Reviewed by Vernon Small) Essentially,' this is neither a book about chess nor a. book about 'Sherlock Holmes. Such a studiedly paradoxical statement needs some explanation. Raymond Smullyan makes no claim to. be ' Arthur Conan Doyle reincarnate'; he is a teacher of logic at the City of New York University Graduate Centre. His principal aim in this book seems to be the presentation of deductive logic, and he does this in a most entertaining and original way — by presenting chess problems for his shadowy revival of the master detective to solve. Of course, these problems are not of the type well known . to. all chess enthusiasts, involving future play such as “white to move and checkmate in' two moves.” Instead, they concern the application of pure logic to deduce what has already happened.' For instance, “on which square -. was the white queen captured?” . . ■ It will be difficult, for chess players of all strengths not to be obfuscated

by this immensely . entertaining book, but it may transpire that only the best “future sighted” players will appreciate the most complex examples of retrograde analysis given. At the least, a .thorough knowledge of the rules is an essential prerequisite. The narrative that provides the vehicle for the problems is. through the “teaching" of Watson (and the reader), a little laboured. It lacks many of the trappings of the real Holmes stories that could easily have been inserted. However. '---hen the devious Moriarty appears on the scene and Holmes is forced to use his deductive powers to solve a double murder, the story takes over and Smullyan seems to be carried away by the fictive process. For those readers who have become addicted to backward chess thinking, the author includes an appendix of 10 more problems (by Moriarty, of course). The real pity is that such an original and interesting hook remain closed to most readers‘because of the specialised knowledge or that it presupposes. But for the chess player it must rank as one of the most readable books published since Hartston’s “How to Cheat at Chess.”