Last time we met with Monsters,1 there was a man looking for his daughter in an art gallery were a rather disturbing portrait of her had appeared. This time, two men see their planned fishing trip disturbed by an extraordinary storm. Because of this happy circumstance, they find themselves in comfortable chairs with a nice drink in front of a chessboard, instead of sitting for hours next to a river, staring at a floater and being eaten alive by mosquitoes.
And we are in luck, too, because we get a pretty clear shot of the position they have on the board. If the resolution had been just as clear, there would have been no problems with reconstructing the position. As is, the identities of some pieces, particularly those on black’s king’s side, are uncertain.2
Black takes up his bishop, makes an irritated face and then topples his king. Then there is the following dialogue…
Howard: You resign?!
Frederick: What choice do I have? You’d have mated me in two moves.
Howard: What…? Yes, I suppose I would have.
…which firmly confirms my suspicion that these are two unfathomably stupid people. There is no mate in two, of course, not even if I got the identities of some pieces wrong. But there is a queen hanging on h3 and that’s just as fatal.
At this point, a man comes stumbling at the door, screaming for help.3 After some investigation, they find that his brain has been completely eaten away by something. This ghastly discovery greatly disturbs them. But they need not fear: given how they play, no brain-eating alien will be interested in them.
Realism: 2/5 This is yet another example of a position in which every piece is on a normal square but there are just too many unanswerable questions: how did the queens end up in their Mexican stand off? Where are the g-pawns? What didn’t happen on black’s king’s side?
Probable winner: The only reason white won’t have a free extra queen is that his opponent already resigned.
1. […they were developing an energy drink.] ↩
2. [If NASA decides — space being eaten — to turn to diagram editors, they might be able to make one as good as this one.] ↩
3. [He probable saw the position through the window.] ↩