Limericks and linework

The dryads have reconvened. Not to annotate Tal’s seductions or Ivanchuk’s wanderings—but to gossip about three others who walked through their Forest. These grandmasters are summoned not by rating or résumé, but by temperament: Kasparov, the monarch, charges through the trees with rook-swinging hubris; Karpov, the cartographer, maps the periphery of the Forest with logic and quiet restraint; Grischuk, the time-troubled trickster makes the dryads giggle.

This piece is a collaboration between Pi, Albert, and Meursault repurposing unused artwork and text from Dryads of the Dark Forest to cast Kasparov, Karpov, and Grischuk not merely as grandmasters, but as mythic archetypes. And the dryads—those eternal witnesses to the forest’s drama—offer their verdicts with poetic precision (with help from Albert!).

There once was a monarch named Garry,
Whose rook swings were bold, never wary.
He charged through the trees,
Like a drunk Achilles—
Hubris! A tale cautionary!”
–Albert

The Forest belongs to the Dryads–they want players to seduce them with calculation: this is the bait (not the strength of the opponent, or the position). The Dryads do not reward strength, nor caution—they beckon those who dare to dazzle. Kasparov, in his prime, never hesitated. He took the bait not because he was fooled, but because, in his prime, he believed the Forest itself was his to command. The Dryads watched with delight as he plunged into their traps, not out of ignorance, but out of hubris. He did not seek to escape the Forest; he sought to conquer it. And sometimes, he did.

Karpov did not enter the Forest unless absolutely necessary. He preferred the terrain just outside its borders—mapped, measured, and ready for manoeuvres. His games were long, deliberate pilgrimages through positional nuance. He ground, he waited, he adjusted. The Dryads knew him, but they did not bother to tempt him. (Or perhaps they whispered to him and he refused to listen!)

“I would choose clear positional pressure that leads to an endgame with microscopic chances of victory over a beautiful tactical blow that doesn’t allow for precise calculation.

A cartographer named Anatoly
Drew his maps with a logic most holy.
He declined every snare,
With positional flair—
The dryads found him too melancholy.
–Albert

They respected his restraint. He was the only player who could walk the Forest’s edge without being drawn in, the only one who saw its shape without needing to explore its depths.

Grischuk did not prepare for the Forest—he improvised. He wandered in with a shrug, already in time trouble. His navigation of the Dark Forest presented as riddles wrapped in hesitation, punctuated by brilliance. The Dryads adored him—not because he seduced them with calculation, but because he made them laugh. He blitzed through the haze, half-lost, half-enchanted. Wholly unpredictable. Where Kasparov demanded and Karpov declined, Grischuk tangoed. And sometimes, in the blur, he saw paths no cartographer could chart and no monarch could command.

Young Sasha would ponder and stall,
While his clock ticked a funeral call.
He’d blitz through the haze,
In a time-trouble daze—
The dryads just giggled through it all
–Albert

Editor’s Notes

• Meursault’s copy for Dryads of the Dark Forest included games played by Karpov and Grischuk. These were, in my opinion, too “technical”. Meursault and I agreed that we would restrict chess notation only to those “variations” that I could comprehend without a chessboard. Karpov’s long manoeuvres were beyond me; as were Grischuk’s. The introductions to those sections are used in this piece. Albert wrote the limericks. The artwork is Pi’s. I love these caricatures!

• Pi has taken a fancy to the fog-dappled aesthetic of games like Myst: a restricted colour palette, pixelation, dithering, and so on. Do let us know what you think.