Silent Witch: Chinmoku no Majo no Kakushigoto - Ch. 29.2

[MangaDex]

 

[Aliamus]

Lana was the G.O.A.T., is the G.O.A.T., and she'll be the G.O.A.T. tomorrow too.​

 

[Jatopian]

p3, "cheekmate" -> "checkmate". I guess you had the next page's cheek pinching scene on your mind.
p4, "stalematess" -> "stalemates". Stalematess sounds like an insult for a girl who always ties.

Anyway, unhinged analogies are apparently expected from high level chess players, so the music rant is in line with that.

 

[Exeos]

thanks for the chapter!

 

[DirtEater21]

Thank you for the translation. I can’t wait for he chess competition

 

[lesseffective]

The prince got exactly what he wanted...

 

[kingdudman]

Thanks for the upload yo

 

[KuroViLolitannia]

That glasses bastard should be boiled

 

[Silfir]

"I was trying to go for stalemate but I checkmated you instead, oopsie" is truly the least believable line about chess that has ever been uttered. Stalemate combinations exist, but since stalemate is defined by a complete absence of legal moves, they're purely a phenomenon of the endgame, and the side pursuing them is exclusively the side that is currently losing. The closest thing to a common "stalemating pattern" is the suicidal rook or queen who give the king checks from just one square away over and over again, because they happen to be the last piece that player can move.

They conspicuously show the board from a below-the-table angle, so that we can only ever see the pieces in the first rank and maybe some in the second (maybe they're afraid of anal-retentive blowhards like myself scrutinizing the position), but even from this angle, the position makes no sense. Monica's rook on a8 and knight on b8 apparently have never moved. It's abundantly clear that she isn't even close to being in a position where stalemate could apply. (So when she says she did her absolute best to get a stalemate, she's absolutely, positively lying through her teeth.) How did she become the best chess player out of the three representatives wasting her time studying stalemating patterns instead of, you know, checkmating ones, in such a short amount of time? Well, she's up against Mr. "I lose every endgame because I refuse to promote my pawns" and another player who is even worse than that, since apparently Elliot is the captain, so the hurdle wasn't that high.

And what's with the sideways finger gun on page two? Is this supposed to be what a hand looks like that has just made a chess move?

 

[CrusaderJerome]

It's still not nearly as bad as Code Geass where they ignore the rules of chess to make psychological power moves, lol.

 

[Jatopian]

@Silfir You're not wrong, but the manga's chess realism was already on shaky ground with the "oops I didn't know about castling so my certain victory has become certain defeat" from a supposed prodigy character. We're just going to have to put chess rules in the suspension-of-disbelief pile for this manga.

Maybe this makes more sense to a writer who was assuming chess works like some other game where this is realistic. Shogi maybe?

 

[KohD]

@Silfir You're not wrong, but the manga's chess realism was already on shaky ground with the "oops I didn't know about castling so my certain victory has become certain defeat" from a supposed prodigy character. We're just going to have to put chess rules in the suspension-of-disbelief pile for this manga.

Maybe this makes more sense to a writer who was assuming chess works like some other game where this is realistic. Shogi maybe?

In the first chapter with that nonsense pawn and class metaphor, there was a user that explained that is how it worked in shogi, and that stalemates were much more common there, as well as developing your own castle. This author just didn't do their research, or had to use chess in this more western-like story.

 

[TrapCard113]

"Cheekmate" is when you win at chess so hard your opponent is legally bound by the rules to drop their pants and assume the position.

 

[fluffymangalover]

I'm thinking back to the anime right now and just realized, they made Monica older in it (I think), but anyways, I'm excited for the upcoming chapters

 

[XenoAshura]

well played your highness, well played~

 

[Silfir]

@Silfir You're not wrong, but the manga's chess realism was already on shaky ground with the "oops I didn't know about castling so my certain victory has become certain defeat" from a supposed prodigy character. We're just going to have to put chess rules in the suspension-of-disbelief pile for this manga.

Maybe this makes more sense to a writer who was assuming chess works like some other game where this is realistic. Shogi maybe?

To be clear, walls of text talking about nothing but the chess in any given manga chapter on mangadex is the one truly self-indulgent pastime I allow myself. It's not serious at all.

Obviously the mangaka is a little hamstrung by the light novel they're adapting, where most of this chess talk originates from. The one piece of research that I think they should be able to do, though, is to watch the anime. Assuming we're caught up to the raws, they should be able to steal the homework the anime production did for the upcoming chess content.

I wish I did know a little more about shogi, so I could put this stuff into the proper context. The thing is, I thought there was something about stalemates being more common in shogi, but a stalemate by the definition of chess (no legal moves) is even harder to come by there than it is in chess, because players can put captured pieces back onto the board. Also, a stalemate in shogi is a win for the player who delivers it. So maybe during research the author of the light novel found out that stalemate in chess is a draw (unlike in shogi), and that a draw is the most common outcome for a game of chess, and thought one fact had to do with the other.

(What I was thinking of with regards to shogi having more stalemates was jishogi, translated to "impasse". Most shogi pieces are rubbish at moving backwards, so when the player's kings reach their respective promotion zone - the other player's starting zone - a draw by impasse is usually declared if both players have roughly the same amount of material. But like all forms of draw in shogi, an impasse is extremely rare to come by. The rules are basically designed to force a result. So it may be hard to understand for someone with purely a shogi background exactly why chess has so many draws.)

I don't want to hate on the chess in Silent Witch too hard, because a lot of it is fixable if you substitute the term "stalemate" for just "draw". The truly unforgivable crime is Elliot's refusal to promote, which gives me far less to talk about because it's so obviously wrong. And it makes no sense in shogi either, so there's a distinct possibility the author knows jack about either chess or shogi.

 

[Banana_Splits]

She will always be our little squirrel, oh and yeah gonna have to agree with

KuroViLolitannia i need Bernie boiled​

 

[CrimsonNanashi]

Bernie needs to be drawn and quartered as far as I’m concerned for what he did to monica

 

[EJLav]

I assumed Bernie passively led to her hiding in her cabin because he was a jerk, but did he also tell her to go away and I just missed it?? He sucks either way

 

[JJTheWeeb]

"I was trying to go for stalemate but I checkmated you instead, oopsie" is truly the least believable line about chess that has ever been uttered. Stalemate combinations exist, but since stalemate is defined by a complete absence of legal moves, they're purely a phenomenon of the endgame, and the side pursuing them is exclusively the side that is currently losing. The closest thing to a common "stalemating pattern" is the suicidal rook or queen who give the king checks from just one square away over and over again, because they happen to be the last piece that player can move.

They conspicuously show the board from a below-the-table angle, so that we can only ever see the pieces in the first rank and maybe some in the second (maybe they're afraid of anal-retentive blowhards like myself scrutinizing the position), but even from this angle, the position makes no sense. Monica's rook on a8 and knight on b8 apparently have never moved. It's abundantly clear that she isn't even close to being in a position where stalemate could apply. (So when she says she did her absolute best to get a stalemate, she's absolutely, positively lying through her teeth.) How did she become the best chess player out of the three representatives wasting her time studying stalemating patterns instead of, you know, checkmating ones, in such a short amount of time? Well, she's up against Mr. "I lose every endgame because I refuse to promote my pawns" and another player who is even worse than that, since apparently Elliot is the captain, so the hurdle wasn't that high.

And what's with the sideways finger gun on page two? Is this supposed to be what a hand looks like that has just made a chess move?

i think you forgot but she did actual get a stalemate with black haired dude. hence why he accused her of holding back (tie with him but checkmating the prince when the prince should be better)