The habitués of Chess House (which was on 72nd Street, but no longer exists) were mostly elderly Jewish men. The air was dense with pipe and cigar smoke. Opponents did not talk to each other much, but it was the custom to engage in incessant thinking aloud, chattering to oneself, and verbigeration. Once, when I blundered by leaving a knight en prise (meaning undefended and liable to capture)—or in the chess slang “hanging”—my elderly opponent wondered aloud, “Why is this knight different from any other knight?” I thought he was just making a sarcastic comment about my play, until ten years later I finally got the joke while watching a TV show about Passover!
