The 44th Chess Olympiad of 2022, the first to be hosted by India, was held near which city?

The correct answer is A, Chaturanga. Chaturanga was played in India in the Gupta age and its name means four limbs, standing for the four divisions of an ancient army: infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots. These four survive on the modern board as the pawn, the knight, the bishop and the rook. The game passed to Persia, where it was called Shatranj and where the phrase shah mat, meaning the king is helpless, gave English the word checkmate, and reached Europe through the Arabs. Option B is wrong because Pachisi is a race game played on a cross-shaped cloth with cowrie shells, the ancestor of Ludo. Option C is wrong because Gilli Danda is a village bat-and-stick game with no board. Option D is wrong because Chausar, the dice game of the Mahabharata story, is a relative of Pachisi and not of chess.

The correct answer is B, Viswanathan Anand. Anand, born in Mayiladuthurai and brought up in Chennai, earned the Grandmaster title in 1988 while still a teenager and became the first Indian to hold the highest lifetime title awarded by FIDE. His speed at the board earned him the nickname Lightning Kid. He went on to win the FIDE world title in 2000 and became undisputed world champion in 2007, holding the crown until 2013. Option A is wrong because Pentala Harikrishna took the title much later, in the following generation. Option C is wrong because Manuel Aaron was India's first International Master, in 1961, a lower title, and he never became a Grandmaster. Option D is wrong because Dibyendu Barua, though an early Indian talent who beat Viktor Korchnoi as a boy, became a Grandmaster after Anand.

The correct answer is A, Koneru Humpy. Humpy, from Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, earned the open Grandmaster title in 2002 while in her teens, and at that time she was the youngest woman in the world to have done so. She has also been a world champion in the rapid form of the game. The open Grandmaster title should not be confused with the separate Woman Grandmaster title, which several Indian players earned earlier. Option B is wrong because Dronavalli Harika, a three-time bronze medallist at the Women's World Championship, took the title after Humpy. Option C is wrong because Tania Sachdev holds the International Master and Woman Grandmaster titles. Option D is wrong because Vaishali Rameshbabu, the sister of R Praggnanandhaa, became a Grandmaster much later, in the present generation of Indian players.

The correct answer is C, 64. A chessboard is a square divided into eight rows, called ranks, and eight columns, called files, so the number of squares is 8 multiplied by 8, that is 64. They are coloured alternately light and dark, 32 of each, and the board is turned so that each player has a light square in the bottom right corner. Each side begins with 16 pieces, which fill the first two ranks, so 32 of the 64 squares are occupied at the start. Option A is wrong because 36 would be a six by six board. Option B is wrong because 49 would be seven by seven. Option D is wrong because 81 is the nine by nine grid of Sudoku, not of chess. Remember the pair of figures: 64 squares and 32 pieces.

The correct answer is B, 1924. FIDE, the Federation Internationale des Echecs, was founded in Paris in 1924, and its motto is Gens una sumus, a Latin phrase meaning we are one people. Because it was founded on 20 July, that date is observed every year as International Chess Day. FIDE awards the lifetime titles of Candidate Master, FIDE Master, International Master and Grandmaster, and it runs the world championship cycle and the Chess Olympiad. Option A is wrong because 1912 belongs to no landmark in chess administration. Option C is wrong because 1936 is a decade after the founding. Option D is wrong because 1951 is the year the All India Chess Federation, the national body, was formed, which is a different fact that examiners deliberately place among the options.