The first evidence of the queen’s newfound power, Ms. The metamorphosis happened some time between 14. Each culture adopted its own spin on the rules, but the movement of the queen remained commonplace across all iterations and offshoots of the game. This remained the status quo, with minimal deviation, across Europe for several centuries thereafter. The monk described the layout of the board and the movement of the pieces, but the newly minted queen retained the limited movement of the vizier. Yalom, the first European to rebaptize the vizier into a queen (regina) was a German-speaking monk who penned a Latin poem entitled “Verses on Chess” in the 990s. To Europeans, the vizier was a culturally alien figure. The counselor had been promoted, but its movement remained terribly constrained: one square diagonally in any direction. Murray pointed out in his 1913 book, “A History of Chess,” the farzin’s physical proximity to the shah ultimately engendered the drawing of an equivalence between the farzin and the wazir (or vizier), a powerful figure who served as the shah’s most trusted adviser. In place of the queen, the Persians had farzin, a male figure whose name roughly translates to counselor. Meanwhile, the Persians “took from the Indians the essentials of the game - the six different figures, the board with 64 squares - and rebaptized the pieces with Persian names.” A great number of non-English words for chess, such as the Russian shakhmaty, derive from shah, the Persian word for king. In India, the game was called chaturanga (“four members”), which, as historian Marilyn Yalom wrote in her 2004 book, “Birth of the Chess Queen,” denotes the “four parts of the Indian army: chariots, elephants, cavalry and infantry.” Around the start of the seventh century, the game we now call chess started to emerge in Persian and Indian literature. The scenario I just laid out was the reality for an entire millennium. Gone would be the most beautiful sacrifices! The most powerful attacks would be diminished! If the movement of the queen were even slightly limited, the game of chess would change beyond recognition. In this scenario, the chess board is controlled by the rooks, and the best players sacrifice their queens for strategic or tactical gain without a second thought. The queen hobbles along, one square at a time, from one corner of the board to another. Imagine, for a moment, a scenario in which the queen is the weakest piece on the board. I hope that this week’s puzzles served as a worthy reminder that all of us - beginners and grandmasters alike - can unite around an appreciation of the unique, almost otherworldly beauty of the royal game. There is something inherently satisfying about giving up the strongest piece on the board in order to checkmate the enemy king. The step from conceiving to practicing is much smaller.The queen is known as the most powerful piece on the chess board, so the prospect of sacrificing it invokes an unparalleled excitement among chess enthusiasts. But even if Gautier is not basing his divine fers on the actual assize, his is still the greater accomplishment, conceiving fully what remained latent in the medieval imagination: a more powerful fers. As we noted, every court had its own assizes or ‘house rules’ for chess, some marked by highly unusual divergences. Whether Gautier or anyone he knew actually played chess this way is impossible to know. Here is the earliest known description of the modern queen-movement – nearly 250 years before the first recorded modern game. This fers mates him in straight lines this fers mates him at an angle this fers takes away his bad-mouthing this fers takes away his prey this fers always torments him this fers always goads him this fers drives him out from square to square by superior strength. Other ferses move but one square, but this one invades so quickly and sharply that before the devil has taken any of hers, she has him so tied up and so worried that he doesn’t know where he should move. The 13th century Miracles de la Sainte Vierge, Gautier de Coinci offers praise for the Virgin Mary, and writes in a way comparing her to the traditional chess queen/fers:
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