Wednesday, November 20, 2013

The perceptive reader will doubtless observe


This week, in the parallel universe where plagiarism matters.

Back in the chess universe - or for that matter the Times and Spectator universe, where blatant and egregious plagiarism is quite acceptable - you will recall that by last week we'd established that Ray produced eight consecutive plagiarised Times columns last June, from the 4th to the 12th of the month (excluding a Sunday).

Or rather, at least eight, since although we couldn't be sure that the column for 3 June (covering game two of the 1908 world championship match) wasn't original, it smelled whiffy and so we invited readers to take a look at it and see if they could identify its origins.

They did - and we are grateful to our readers Andrew Farthing and John Cox for their help.

Andrew suggested:


while John provided the text from the 1975 edition, which you can see below.


In truth, although everything is - of course - plagiarised, not every word is taken directly from Korchnoi's original notes. But you have to work damned hard to find the exceptions.

1. Black's move eleven.

Learn from the Grandmasters:
Times:

I suppose "the square" is new. Nothing else is.

2. White's move fourteen.

Learn from the Grandmasters:
Times:

Here "crushing" replaces "overwhelming". Every other word is stolen.

3. White's move fifteen.

Learn from the Grandmasters:
Times:

"An increased" becomes "a big". Not a big difference in the rest.

4. White's move sixteen.

Learn from the Grandmasters:
Times:

You have to pick your way through this one (and it may be harder for younger readers who don't know descriptive notation, let alone non-chessplayers) but to cut a long search short, Ray replaced "gives White a winning advantage" with "winning" and filched the rest directly.

5. White's move twenty-seven.

Learn from the Grandmasters:
Times:

But this note is a word-for-word wonder! Hurrah!

6. Black's move thirty-one.

Learn from the Grandmasters:
Times:

And finally, although Ray leaves some of Korchnoi's text untouched, every word that appears in the Times note is taken from the original. Unacknowledged, unattributed, plagiarised.

Not, as we know, the first time Ray ripped off Korchnoi.

That makes nine consecutive plagiarised Times columns, from 3 June to 12 June 2013. 2 June was a Sunday, so what about 1 June?

If that one was plagiarised too, he'd be Ten-In-A-Row-Ray.

So did he?

What do you reckon?

[Thanks to Andrew Farthing, John Cox, Pablo Byrne and Angus French]

[Ray Keene plagiarism index]
[Plagiarised by Ray Keene index]
[Ray Keene index]

1 comment:

Ashish said...

Well, he did translate from descriptive to algebraic. I think that merits a pat on the back, if not a standing ovation.