1. Try to answer this in 30 seconds: Your opponent has just moved something from a white square. You immediately capture it on a black square. What you captured must be:
???????

2. Among Mikhail Botvinnik's early claims to fame was:
(a) Playing checkers when he was 3
(b) Playing three games of chess blindfolded when he was 10
(c) Playing a Mozart piano concerto when he was 12
(d) Playing the lead role in The Importance of Being Earnest in high school.

3. In 1996, Bobby Fischer cited Gata Kamsky, Vladimir Kramnik and Vishy Anand as proof of:
(a) The decline of creativity in the middle game
(b) How you can become world-class without mastering the endgame
(c) Studying openings by computer leads to weak eyes and thick glasses.
(d) Tall GMs beat short GMs.

top2pr---

1. is partially correct.

2. and 3. are incorrect.

The answer to 1. is going to be controversial which I didnt comtemplate when I wrote the question. I will let the quiz run another day.

1 could be a knight or a pawn or a rook or a queen.

1. Anything but a king or bishop

2. b. 3 game blindfold

3. a. decline of creativity

Scottrf, I got this question from Chess Life Dec. 2006 in a quiz by Andy Soltis. Soltis says the answer is a knight and a pawn. But obviously you are correct when you wrote ---1 could be a knight or a pawn or a rook or a queen.

sirrichardburton, 1. is correct.

2. and 3. are not.

You can't move a king into check.

easy you never capture the king,merely mate him

I think, in answer to the question,--- Try to answer this in 30 seconds: Your opponent has just moved something from a white square. You immediately capture it on a black square. What you captured must be: anything but a bishop or a king.

The bishop because it stays on its own color and the king (because one can't capture a king in classical chess.)   

Well my 2nd try on 2. and 3.

2.c. M.K. playing Mozart when 12

3. c. Tall GM beating short GMs

The answer to #2 is

d. Playing the lead role in The Importance of Being Earnest in high school.  Botvinnik talks about this in his autobiography "Achieving the Aim".

The answer to #3 is

(c) Studying openings by computer leads to weak eyes and thick glasses.
Fischer cited this in support of Fischerandom chess.

gee i'm glad i never had this test in college,i bombed.....

Only real chess nerds would know the answer to these questions. At least you gave it a shot!

Of course, by 1996, Fischer was already certifiably insane, claiming amongst other wild and false things that all the moves of all five Karpov-Kasparov matches were prearranged.

When you have been screwed over and over again like Fischer, Reshevsky and other Western masters, perhaps there comes a time when one believes everything the Russians do is a lie and a phony.

Perhaps Fischer wasn't as paranoid as we are led to believe.