Review: The Chess Pub Quiz Puzzle Book by Dmitri Reinderman

The Chess Pub Quiz Puzzle Book: Who is MC Hammer and other Chess Trivia

by Dmitri Reinderman

New in Chess 2023, 144 pages, paperback

Sample materialavailable on the publisher's website

The Dutch grandmaster Dmitri Reinderman clearly has multiple talents. Long a deviser of 'pop quizzes', including at Christmas for New in Chess, he has now published this entertaining book of trivia puzzles. We are asked to identify photos, work out the titles of chess books, guess some surprising characteristics of the world champions, 'guess the blunders', match chess tweets to their authors, and so on in an endlessly creative series of challenges. A section of hints precedes the solutions - helpfully, as much of this is very tricky to solve (or so it seems to me, as a novice in quizzes even if not in chess). Some solutions have to be written in boxes which then reveal a key word. Clever connections appear between chess and music, film, or cities. It's all good fun and there is much to appeal to a variety of solvers, whether those with more knowledge of chess history or of the present-day game. I suspect sales of this book will rise just before Christmas...