JM: "Could the outfit
Charles II wore during his escape from Zembla in a very conspicuous red be
related to such Red, and not Black, chess pieces? Could this substitution (
black/red pieces ) indicate some particular chess-related
clue?
Stan
Kelly-Bootle: ...regardless of the two
colours of the pieces, the terms W (White) and B (Black) are used to denote the
opening player and her opponent respectively. White is by far the most common
physical colour for the opening player. The opposing colour is usually Black but
can be any distinctive, darker shade e.g., Red as a literary
‘conceit’ (cf Lewis Carroll!)... VN asks “White to play
and [achieve some stated goal. e.g., mate in two; draw; lose!]”
Not to be confused with general chess problems ... Black’s best
move...
JM: S K-B added a PS: "Guess who’s coming to dinner tonight? Prof.
Victor Fet!" and one can never be too careful with his messages, so I checked
wikipedia and got: Guess Who's
Coming to Dinner is a 1967 Academy Award-winning comedy-drama film starring
Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, and Katharine Houghton.The
movie concerns Joanna Drayton, a young White American woman (Houghton) who has
had a whirlwind romance with Dr. Prentice (Poitier), an African American she
met...
A very interesting play but I didn't get the
point (reference) and my question remains unaswered in one aspect: if the
physical colors of the chess pieces don't alter the structure of chess
competitions,semaphores depend of them and literary figures,too.
I would like to know if others were
also struck by Charles II in a Red disguise in relation to
the "solus rex" problem.
Black and White have other
special meanings for Russians of the Nabokov era (and the Reds,
of course). Could the King's disguise allude to any extraneous
political situation?