This is mostly for fun, but if you were in a new crowd of “friends” at some gathering and you wanted to find fellow chess enthusiasts among them, what five terms or names or buzzwords would you use in casual conversation to see who responded in a similar vein?
Examples:
Maroczy Bind
Zwischenzug
Reinfeld
Bad Kissingen
Alekhine
They don’t have to be obscure, just specialized enough to chess that the other person ought to have some familiarity with them.
Zugzwang - my favourite chess term
Indeed. It ought to attract a fellow fan and very few others. Good one.
fianchetto
en passant
The Sicilian Dragon (my favorite)
I missed the requirement for five buzzwords. In addition to the three mentioned earlier, “Zwischenzug” and “Ruy Lopez”
I’m going to guess that you liked the chess gimmick in Stalag 17 
Even aside from its chess meaning, “zugzwang” is just plain a fun word to say.
Zugzwang
Zwischenzug
Zeitnot
J’adoube
Sac
There are a lot of chess terms and names that I’d hesitant to use because I’m unsure of the pronunciation. Alekhine. J’adoube. Many more.
I might throw in…
Poison pawn
Nimzowitschian
Breaks up the bishop pair
Lost the exchange
Moving toward the end game
But do you say /ˈtsuːktsvaŋ/ or, as Google and Oxford Learner’s Dictionary give as the primary pronunciation, /ˈzʌg ˌzwæŋ/?
And it’s actually very useful outside of chess.
Alekhine Gun
Chess960
Luft
Caro-Kann
Rather than starting another thread on the subject of chess, I’ll just ask here:
Who is/was your favorite chess author?
Just for the record, the whole idea for this thread came when Renfield was mentioned in reference to Dracula. I immediately substituted Fred Reinfeld for that name and I must have at least 20 of his and Reuben Fine’s books, along with Irving Chernev. The ONE book that helped my progress (such as it is/was) most was Winning Chess: How To See Three Moves Ahead
Half open file
Bad bishop
Drawish
Hypermodern
O-O-O
The two books that got me to a reasonably proficient level were Irving Chernev’s Logical Chess and Simon Webb’s Chess For Tigers. The former explained how chess works by explaining historical games move by move. The latter explained how to win without any regard for the niceties of theory.
I need to check out the Tigers book. I feel I should mention Pawn Power in Chess which did for my understanding of Strategy what Winning Chess did for Tactics.
This one, and an assist from Chernev’s Practical Chess Endings.
I think my five terms would be:
fianchetto
zugzwang
Grünfeld
passed pawn
draw by repetition
Five words:
Tortured
in
the
Pasadena
Jailhouse
Wonderful. I need to read that one. (I had to look it up, too!)