WTF: Chess edition

There’s a lot of WTF going on nowadays. I’ve stopped believing in a lot of things and a lot of people but you know there’s a limit to even my insousiance. (I think that’s the word I mean unless it’s a sort of sauce used in French cuisine.)

The BBC is reporting that a Canadian chess master has been accused of cheating using anal beads.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66921563

Yes, go and check. You’ll see that there are some questions to be answered.

The most inportant one being how? How in the unstable name of Lawrence Henry Clutterbuck does one use anal beads to cheat in a chess match?

Does a person get better at chess when they have a chain of spherical objects (made of some substance suitable for safe rectal insertion and then withdrawal with a means of pulling them out at one end go and look at the Wikipedia article if you want more information ). Is it scientifically proven that…

Oh, wait. The Wiki article covers the means. Hmmm, remote controlled vibrating anal beads… Which convey the computer’s advice for a particular move by Morse code…

Oh, I see.

I would have thought there was a problem here with the bandwith of the medium, the skill of reading Morse code and the danger of the vibration being too loud before we got to the problem of the chess player enjoying himself too much.

Hmm, Wiki describes the whole affair as a meme sprung from a joke on some chess fancier’s blog. The BBC did a dreadful job of reporting this then.

At this moment I feel that the science fiction of my youth has failed me as a guide to the actual future I am living in. They did not predict computers that clever, remote controlled anal simulation or blogs. I shall go away and have some supper before I succumb to terminal Future Shock.

There will be no illustration with this post, contrary to my custom because… You can get that sort of stimulation for yourselves and I don’t want the WordPress police coming around to interrogate me.