Dear Lord, where do I start with this one? Okay, so half an internet century ago there was minor fad for adding English subtitles to foreign-language songs, with the important caveat that the subtitles show what the foreign words sound like in English rather than the actual translations. The most famous examples of the genre are probably Moskau by Dschinghis Khan, Benny Lava, and our subject of today: salsa cookies. This one is based on O fortuna from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana and has been uploaded and reuploaded countless times to YouTube, accompanied by a meme-based video. The interest for us comes from the fact that the Latin word egestatem (poverty) is misheard as play chess all day and comes with a picture:

Even by the standards of this blog, that’s a rather poor showing. I appreciate the message – even if a nominal amount of time has to be set aside for eating and sleeping and such – but the drawing is not up to snuff: the background is missing, the hands are rudimentary at best, and there is a worm crawling out of the guy’s head, probably trying to escape castigation on this blog. In vain, as you see.

Now, let’s – after noting that h1 is a black square, which seems to be de rigueur – study the position a bit more closely. Unfortunately, a significant part of the chessboard is not in view due to bad framing. What we see is the following:¹

and, in fact, we don’t even see that, really. I’m assuming the piece on f4 is a pawn, but it might just as well be a bishop. As for the one on b2, the only reason I know it’s a knight is that our worm-infested protagonist moves it to d3. Contrary to all expectations, that’s actually a perfectly natural move, centralising the knight and defending the f4 pawn at the same time.

Is there anything we can infer about the part of the board we don’t see? Not really, I’m afraid. Judging from white’s expression, he is quite confident, suggesting that he might be some material up. Perhaps only the kings are off-screen, but I can’t even tell where they are. Where are the royalty watchers when you need them?

Realism: 4/5 Of course, some unspeakable things could be going on on the 7th and 8th rank, but I’m willing to be lenient.

Probable winner: White. The worm is strong with him.²

<sup>1. [Add your own subtitles here.]↩
2. [A white worm, presumably.]↩</sup>