On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 19:26:56 GMT, Anders Thulin
wrote, in part:

John Savard wrote:


It should be clear, though, that I am not proposing even *that*
seriously.

A pity ... this could, with a little bit of work, be turned into
rather nice satire, I think.

It was intended as satire - in a sense. Very low key and dry satire,
to be sure, and not including anything not meant seriously.

But upon reflection, I realized that there might be one plausible way
to connect chess to scantily-clad women after all. (As my original
post noted, it isn't enough to tack them on, one has to sneak them in
with a good excuse, so that it provides an additional opportunity to
sneak out to watch them that existing opportunities do not provide.)

Occasionally, there are held demonstration games of chess with living
pieces - that is, with people standing in squares of a landscaped
garden, dressed as chess pieces.

If, instead of standard Chess, a variant was played that is associated
with a particular nation or culture, naturally the costume of the
pieces would be that associated with that culture, for legitimate
reasons of authenticity.

It is now obvious how to proceed.

A variant of Chess exists, played on a 10 by 10 board, customarily
chequered into orange and green squares, in which the pieces all have
short-range moves, that is associated with an advanced culture which,
none the less, eschews clothing as thoroughly as only a very few of
the most isolated and primitive tribes on Earth do at the present
time.

It's true that the Dwar, the Odwar, the Panthans, and so on, would
usually all be represented by men, only the Princess being a piece
with a female identity.

Of course, the fact that this chess variant has its origin in a fairly
recent work of fiction, whose author passed away in 1965, rather less
than seventy-five years ago, would be a major obstacle to proceeding
in this fashion...

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html