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September 22

Grace Kelly's dialect coaching

In Dial M for Murder (1954), Grace Kelly (an American) played an English character, and her diction reminded me several times of Joan Greenwood – not the latter's huskiness, but certain vowel qualities and a bit of what we might now call a Sean Connery lisp. I wonder whether that was intentional. —Tamfang (talk) 06:08, 22 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps Mid-Atlantic English. Rmhermen (talk) 22:37, 22 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If I were groping for an example of Mid-Atlantic, I wouldn't pick Greenwood. —Tamfang (talk) 09:36, 23 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"100 Great Sporting Moments"

I'm looking for information about this BBC TV programme, which ran, as I recall it, through the 1980s, each episode being about 5 minutes, and often used as a filler when a live programme ended sooner than expected, or something 'broke'.

This is not the same as the Channel 4 programme of a similar name ("100 Greatest Sporting Moments") which ran much more recently and was part of the 100 Greatest series, about which we have an article ;-).

Any reliable sources welcomed; I'd like to create an article about it. --Dweller (talk) 08:11, 22 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I fondly remember this series. I found this on TVArk. --TammyMoet (talk) 17:38, 22 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, though not sure it'd help much with sourcing an overall article. Anyone got anything better? --Dweller (talk) 09:50, 24 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Exchanging pieces in chess

I know chess since I was little, but I'm just not good at it. Currently, I'm playing Windows Chess Titans. Level 5 is the highest I can beat, but it's already becoming a challenge. I used to play against my father quite often. He is a very offensive player and likes to exchange pieces. He says that so many pieces on the board are just too confusing. And somehow this is the same strategy I'm now using against the computer. However, I feel this doesn't make me better in chess. I used to be a player who tried to keep every piece, but that often led to games where everything is stuck and no one wanted to attack. Is exchanging pieces really a beginner strategy? --2.245.127.181 (talk) 17:33, 22 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Piece exchange can be used to force a certain Endgame, or otherwise increase a material or positional advantage. However, our article on Chess_strategy doesn't mention the haphazard exchange of pieces simply to "clear up the board," and I can't recall any well-known chess player who advocated this. OldTimeNESter (talk) 18:17, 22 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting question. You probably found it by now but there is a further (completely unreferenced) discussion at Exchange (chess).--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:18, 23 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You can peruse any number of grandmaster games on the internet, for example ([1]) is a collection of someone's favourite matches between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov. Youtube also has lots of such games. Flicking through them, you'll find that sometimes they exchange and sometimes they do not. It's neither a beginner's tactic, nor an expert's. Here ([2]) is some advice for beginners on exchanges. Experts do not usually exchange to "clear the board", they do so because they perceive some subtle advantage in doing so. --Dweller (talk) 09:54, 24 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]