In this episode of the classic Inspector Morse series, our eponymous hero is after a satanic murderer with a long rap sheet of various depraved crimes. He had been caught and locked up, but then he commits yet another crime, more dastardly than any previous ones: he invites his guards to a nice game of chess, but instead of gallantly opposing them on the board he drugs them to escape. And that’s totally against the rules!
Maybe he was annoyed that they had to use a small portable chess set. I am, admittedly, but that’s because it’s hard to recognize the minuscule pieces in a video. Mister murderer, however, wasn’t keeping a chess in popular culture blog, so for him it’s a particularly very weak excuse. And even I wouldn’t drug anyone over this. 1
I am not sure my reconstruction is very good. I think I have the positions of the pieces right, but I’m less confident about the identities:2
The episode pretty much starts with this position. One of the players is slumped over next to the board and the other is preparing his escape, so we have no idea whose turn it is, nor do we know how they managed to get to this position. Perhaps the devil was involved.
Realism: 3/5 The position looks relatively plausible, a couple of unusual points notwithstanding, like black’s under developed king’s side and the mutually hanging pieces. Hey, I said relatively plausible.
Probable winner: White seems to have the best chances, at least if he’s to move. Otherwise, black can take the knight. However, white has a couple of pawns in compensation and black’s victory is not a foregone conclusion.
1. [At worst, I’d give myself a small dose of theobromine, sugar, and caffeine.] ↩
2. [It’s the day of the diagram editor.] ↩