Daily Rome Shot 1018

I received some mail from the TMSM PO BOX.  Included was a book by a longtime reader who is its author.  It is full of clever things to exercise your mind… and patience.

101 Enigmatic Puzzles: Fractal Mazes, Quantum Chess, Anagram Sudoku, and More

US HERE – UK HERE

There are hard puzzles in this book.

A few of the puzzles are chess related.  Here is one of them.

This is a different kind of puzzle.  I am puzzled by the punch line (the intersection of the diagram, obviously) although the observation about Baptists is funny.  Who can help me with this?  Frankly, I couldn’t care less about Taylor Swift and wouldn’t know a song of hers if it bit me on the leg.  But the notion that there is any connection between her and Aristotle… other than both being carbon-based lifeforms… I dunno.

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

A somewhat more conventional puzzle… white to move and mate in 2.

Nice people! Great service!

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

In chessy news, I am sad to report that my guy Wesley So got bumped down into Division 2 of the chess.com Classic where he also had a rough day. I’m a bit surprised, given his opponents. Also strange was world #4 Nepo losing to world #282 Denis Lazavik and world #2 Fabi losing to Velimir Ivic #204, who also beat world #20 MVL.  These are not over-the-board (OTB) games, but rather online.  The players are supposed to have additional video cams behind them or viewing them to prevent outside help.   The games are also broadcast on a delay.

50% off on premium memberships at chess.com right now.  HERE

And speaking of broadcasts, I’m hoping against hope that one of the commentators tomorrow will not be Tania.  When she isn’t just repeating what others say, she can offer some excellent comments.  However, there are times when her voice quite simply etches multiple glass surfaces.  I have to either keep the volume low or, when I am not multitasking keep my finger over the mute button when things get tense.  That’s when the volume and pitch go way up.  Every other word is pumped up.  To be fair, along the lines of those last qualities, Danny and Danya get every bit as screechy as teenage girls when there are time rush blunders.  Chess is hard.

Meanwhile, in Warsaw, OTB Rapid concluded with Round 9.  The players go on to 18 rounds of Blitz.   China’s Wei Yi (#10) is in the lead with 5 straight wins and undefeated Magnus is second, one point behind.

I miss Rome.  In any event, thank you, O Lord, for this new day.

UPDATE:

I found an open source equalizer to add to my computer to scale down the upper-range.  It doesn’t solve the problem but it helps.

I was a little surprised not to find an equalizer built into Windows.  Strange.