October 29, 2001

7:22 PM

Notorious American correspondence player and chess writer Claude Bloodgood has died. 'A convicted murderer who was sentenced to death but reprieved, Bloodgood was the best known of US prisoner players.' I love obituaries. And what could be sweeter than the cold hand of death dragging Chess Rogues down to Gehanna?
posted by crunchburger (3 comments total)

correspondence player and chess writer (not crunchburger's mistake...it's on the chessmail link story)

Sounds like a Spoonerism!
posted by msacheson at 8:26 PM on October 29, 2001

no, it's right...

"While on death row, Claude spent virtually all of his time playing postal chess, and because he was on death row, the State of Virginia paid his postage. At one time, Claude was playing as many as 2000 games simultaneously. This is probably a record. Claude spent the remainder of his time writing about chess. He wrote numerous articles for various chess publications and also wrote the first of his three published chess books, The Tactical Grob. To this day, this book is considered to be a classic by fans of unorthodox chess openings."

that's from here.
posted by rhyax at 8:31 PM on October 29, 2001

Oh, I get it now...okay. Correspondence writer and chess player makes more sense to my non-chess-playing brain.

Anyway, spoonerisms are funny.
posted by msacheson at 8:30 AM on October 30, 2001