The Dick Van Dyke show is, despite the suspicious spelling of the main character’s last name, one of the most highly acclaimed and popular sitcoms ever. It stars Dick Van Dyke, unsurprisingly, who plays Rob Petrie, an actor in his day-to-day life.1 In this particular episode, he wants to get back money he let a colleague borrow, but he doesn’t want to ask for it because there wouldn’t be a plot then. He needs some advice from a friend, and in order to coax said friend to his lair, he invites him to a game of chess.
And so they find themselves at the board with a cup of coffee on the side. We are thrown into the game somewhere at the end of the opening. Or perhaps in the beginning of the middlegame, because I’m fairly sure you won’t find this position in any opening book — or file, for that matter. Because, generally, you only find legal positions in those.2
And this is very much an illegal position, as that pawn could never have reached a4 without some divine intervention — which, as aid from a third party, is not allowed. Besides being illegal, it is also really silly, of course. Black’s bishop on b4 is just hanging and his pawn has no business on e5 either. Strangely, white is claiming that it’s black to move. In fact, he’s quite insistent, although that’s possibly just an attempt to get him to stop talking about that damn debt.
Petrie’s wife walks in here and Rob, panicked, makes a move. And it very much looks like he plays Bb4. Clearly, he is the victim of some temporal aberrations. And perhaps that explains the whole plot: he may be remembering a debt from the future.3
Realism: 0/5 I suspect the pawn wanted to leave the board, but it didn’t quite make it all the way off of it. But even if it had escaped, the black bishop giving check from b4 can’t really be reconciled with the pawn on a3.
Probable winner: Well, white obviously. But if he really maintains that it’s black’s move we get a philosophical conundrum: can one take the king and, if so, does it win the game?
1. [I guess that’s also true about real life, not just the show.] ↩
2. [This diagram editor has no such qualms, though.] ↩
3. [That wouldn’t be a problem if it were a debt to Merlin, I guess.] ↩