George Duke wrote on Sat, Jan 4, 2014 06:47 PM UTC:
Variantists, please say a prayer for the singleminded OrthoChessist. For
they're locked in a vice and cannot move to avert a gaze. The key
serial number R-N-B-Q-K-P is hard to grasp. Their own colourful history is
off-limits to them: exotic Alfil, unaccustomed General, blindfolded
Philidor, the Turk computer, free castling, Great Chess(es). Riveted
hoi polloi masses are forbidden even glancing at almost twenty-year-old
man-machine Kasparov or randomizing Fischer -- two too controversial.
http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/42-16964968/illustration-of-a-scene-from-gargantua-by.
These images grace Rabelaisian Chess Chapters 24 and 25, when in the 1540s
Queen Whims vanished along with chess variants.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Book/Chapter_XXIV.
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/rabelais/francois/r11g/book5.25.html.
(Queen Whims reappears of course late 20th century under spell of druid Parton, pioneer Boyer, wizard Betza.)
Moreover -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gustave_Dor%C3%A9-L%27Enfance_de_Gargantua.jpg,
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/gustave-dore/the-childhood-of-pantagruel -- OrthoChess champion being self-described "non-reader" [http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/magnus_carlsen.html] puts even fundamentalists further a little on the spot.
Hey really, Charlemagne himself, of same country as Rabelais, was illiterate, yet founded France and more out of Roman Gaul; Charlemagne never got the hang of writing either. Did Charlemagne play Chess? Not a prayer, because Chess forces arrived thereabouts near 1000 from the East.
http://www.art.com/products/p11723721-sa-i1349195/gustave-dore-education-of-gargantua-illustration-from-gargantua-by-francois-rabelais-1494-1553.htm,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gustave_Dor%C3%A9_-_Gargantua.jpg.