Messages, Messages...

I had another game of chess with the computer tonight. I was playing white. Black must have been at least half asleep because it kept on making injudicious moves and I was committing wholesale slaughter. It came to a point that I’ve never seen before, which was:

I had my king, two queens (because I’d promoted one of my pawns), two rooks, two bishops, one knight and five pawns on the board. Black had only its solitary king. Even a novice like me would manage mate in two moves at most, and black should obviously have resigned. Up comes a flash on the screen:

Drawn game

Drawn game?! Are you kidding?! It’s all over. I’ve won by a landslide. The flash gave me two options, either to accept the draw or go back a move and carry on. I chose, unsurprisingly, to carry on. The board froze. Black didn’t move and the program wouldn’t let me move. The game just died, and I call that cheating.

Or maybe something or someone was trying to tell me something, but I haven’t yet worked out what it was.

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And incidentally, T88 has ceased impersonating a London bus and become a veritable leitmotif. Three sightings in the space of five days now. I wonder whether something or somebody is trying to tell me something?