23 July 2019

A Quotable Quote

Pictured here is a search snippet that appeared on a recent search. The search had nothing to do with the content of the snippet and when I tried the same search a few days later, there was no snippet at all.

I don't know why I clicked to expand the question, 'Is chess really that hard?' After all, it's just someone's opinion. Some people will say, 'yes'; others will say, 'no'. Nobody's right and nobody's wrong. The question expanded to this paragraph:-

Chess may not be the easiest game to learn, but it is far from the most difficult. You have to learn the moves of the six pieces, where the piece with the least value, the Pawn, has the most complicated moves. ... One aspect of this myth is true -- it is hard, very hard, to learn to play chess well.

My first reaction was to think, 'That's interesting'. I wasn't sure I agreed with the sentiment, but it sounded like the writer knew something about chess. Then I noticed the reference for the quote (I added speckles to the image to make it hard to read and add a little suspense):-

Top 10 Myths About Chess - Mark Weeks
https://www.mark-weeks.com/aboutcom/aa06f17.htm

The quote was from one of my pages! I wrote those words so many years ago -- June 2006 according to the URL -- that I'd completely forgotten about them. So Google thinks I'm an expert on something. Thanks for the vote of confidence! • For more about Google's 'search snippets' and 'knowledge graphs', see Celebrity Chess Players (March 2019).

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