Sherlock Holmes, his creator and chess

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859-1930) wrote Sherlock Holmes, beginning in 1887. Doyle was a Scottish physician. Sherlock Holmes was featured in 4 novels and 56 short stories.

During his youth, Arthur Conan Doyle won a chess tournament organized by the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

In the story “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman,” published in the December 18, 1926 issue of Liberty magazine and the January 1927 issue of Strand Magazine by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the character Amberley excelled at chess (Sherlock Holmes saying “Amberley excelled at chess – one mark, Watson, of a scheming mind”). Another line was, “It would appear that Amberley has one hobby in life, and it is chess. Not far from him at Lewisham there lives a young doctor who is also a chess-player.”

 In all of Doyle’s 4 novels and 56 short stories, neither Sherlock Holmes nor Dr. Watson ever played a game of chess (or checkers), or even speak about being a chess player. But that doesn’t stop the movies or TV shows.

 In 1980, Raymond Smullyan wrote The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes: 50 Tantalizing Problems of Chess Detection. All the problems involve retrograde analysis.