Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/609

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
ABC—XYZ

CHESS 597 Arabians, Araucanians, Castilians, Irish, and Welsh. Not content with upholding the claims of nations or races, some have endeavoured to fix upon particular individuals as the originators of the game ; and, amongst others, the following have found supporters : Japhet, Shem, King Solomon, the wife of Ravan king of Ceylon, the philosopher Xerxes, the Grecian prince Palamedes, Hermes, Aristotle, the brothers Lydo and Tyrrhene, Semiramis, Zenobia, Attalus who died about 200 B.C., the mandarin Hansing, the Brahman Sissa, and Shatrenscha, stated to be a celebrated Persian astronomer. Many of these ascriptions are of course fabulous, others rest upon little authority, and some of them proceed from easily traceable errors, so where Calculorum, the Welsh recreation of Taivttnvrdd, i.e., PROBLEM No. 3. By F. Healey. (One of the first-prize set of the Bristol Tourney, 1861.) BLACK. WHITE. White to play and mate in three moves. PROBLEM No. 4. By S. Loyd. (One of the second-prize set of the Paris Tourney, 1867.) BLACK. WHITE. to play and mate in four moves. throw-board, and the ancient Irish pastime of Fithcheall are assumed to be synonymous with chess ; whereas, so far be proved, while from what little is known of the Irish game it appears not to have been a sedentary game at all, but most likely an open-air recreation. The claims of the Chinese were advocated in a letter addressed by Mr Eyles Irwin in 1793 to the Earl Charlemont. This paper was published in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, and its purport was that chess, called in the Chinese tongue chong-ki, which, according to Mr Irwin, means the "royal game," was invented in the reign of Kao Tsu, otherwise Lin Pang, then king, but afterwards emperor of Kiangnan, by a mandarin named Hansing, who was in command of an army invading the Shensi country, and who wanted to PROBLEM No. 5. By Lieutenant S. A. Sorensen. (One of the first-prize set of the British Chess Association Tourney, 1872, and also adjudged the best four-move problem of the Tourney.) BLACK. WHITE. White to play and mate in four moves. PROBLEM Xo. 6. By Dr Conrad Bayer. (One of the first-prize set of the British Chess Association Tourney, 1862, and also adjudged the best problem in the Tourney.) BLACK:. WHITE.

White to play and mate in five moves.