Though a poor 'chess talent' I would like to respond to Stan's query. The one board/two brains reminds me of the double halves of a walnut that make up the publisher's office visited by Kinbote in the preface/introduction to PF - this is the human brain of course. Probably Shade's. Recall that the 'office' was at the top of a sky scraper.

I am not sure when scientists became aware of the difference between right and left brain (asymmetry again) but I do recall seeing a human skeleton (a laser replica - hologram? - of a female murder victim found at the La Brea tar pits). I asked a docent how they knew she had been murdered and was told that the right side of her skull had been battered open. Oh, was she left or right handed? Left handed - they could tell because the cavity on that side of the skull was markedly larger than that on the other side. The La Brea Tar Pits is very interesting.

Carolyn Kunin

From: Nabokv-L <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Wed, February 13, 2013 7:13:00 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Ada

Subject:
Re: [NABOKV-L] Ada
From:
Jansy <jansy@aetern.us>
Date:
2/13/2013 9:04 AM
To:
Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>

Stan Kelly-Bootle: CK’s reported ‘King & Queen asymmetry’ will come as a surprise to ALL chess players, both the skilled amateur (like Nabokov/Sirin, author of "Защита Лужина," the ‘worst chess novel ever written!’), and first-day learners! See http://chess.about.com/od/rulesofchess/ss/Boardsetup.htm  You’ll see that the White Queen, initially at d1, ‘faces/looks-at’ the Red (aka Black) Queen, initially on d8, separated by pawns at d2 and d7. Likewise the two Kings initially ‘face/look-at’ each other along the e-column, from e1 and e8, with pawns at e2 and e7. Both the board and piece-settings are positively dripping with symmetries. These make the game the fairest of all, and ‘boredom’ doesn’t enter into it!
 
Jansy Mello: Whose words are you quoting, Stan, when you see "Защита Лужина,"  as the ‘worst chess novel ever written!’? VN was quite young when he wrote it but he was, already, definitely Nabokov (albeit somewhat too blatantly contrived). Besides, as it seems to be obvious from my acceptance of CK's perspective, I'm no chess-player. Many of the strategies found in the text didn't exact this kind of talent from me to enjoy the plot (although I'm still in the dark about how to relate Luzhin's suicide in the novel, and the "self-mate" move in chess)
 
How do you and fellow chess-talents interpret this paragraph from ADA? (the most intriguing parts are the author's insistence on "one" board and "two brains," plus the relation between intermediary infinite number of variations and the conclusive destiny of a "converging development."
"There were those who maintained that the discrepancies and ‘false overlappings’ between the two worlds were too numerous, and too deeply woven into the skein of successive events, not to taint with trite fancy the theory of essential sameness; and there were those who retorted that the dissimilarities only confirmed the live organic reality pertaining to the other world; that a perfect likeness would rather suggest a specular, and hence speculatory, phenomenon; and that two chess games with identical openings and identical end moves might ramify in an infinite number of variations, on one board and in two brains, at any middle stage of their irrevocably converging development."
 
PS: Alexey, I was awed by your informations concerning VN, Byron and Pushkin. I cannot recall any great ingerence of Byron's works in the VN's discussions about Pushkin with Edmund Wilson (perhaps only a quarrel about what kind of translation of Byron -  and why in translation -  did Pushkin read. However, from your notes and Abdel's interested expertise, I agree that the influence of Byron on VN's ADA is huge and not suficciently discussed (or is it?).
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All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.