Ah shit, here we go again. I’ve found yet another long-running multimedia detective franchise that I’d never heard of but that’s massively popular: Nancy Drew. She’s a teenage detective who started her career in children’s books back in 1930, but soon enough there were films, television series, and, from the late nineties on, a long, long list of point-and-click adventure games. In this post, we’re investigating the second one of those, Stay tuned for danger. 1
Nancy is called upon by a soap opera star who wants her to investigate threats made against her co-star Rick. Luckily for her, there is only a handful of plausible suspects. One of them is a certain Dwayne Powers, who envies Rick’s career. When she’s ransacking — sorry, investigating his quarters, she encounters a chessboard with the pieces set up.
It comes into view perfectly and my reconstruction is completely reliable:2
This is very strong evidence that this Dwayne dude has a sick, twisted mind and that he’s capable of anything. How did white lose his f and h pawns? Why did neither side even try to get their king’s bishop out? Why the black rook lift to c6?3
But Nancy shows herself to be a rather poor detective: despite all these obvious indications that Dwayne is mad and dangerous, she completely ignores the board. Apparently she concludes the position is unremarkable. I think Nancy drew the wrong conclusion.
Realism: 2/5 It’s a little painful to give a position like this two full points but, well, dura lex sed lex. Every piece individually is in a reasonable position, so I cannot give a 1.
Probable winner: Hard to say since we don’t know whose move it is. If white is to move, he can get a very decent position by Nxd5 immediately or perhaps b5 first. But if it’s black to move, Be6 would be decidedly unpleasant.
1. [I think they’re going to play Biber’s Rosary sonatas.] ↩
2. [Stay tuned for great diagrams.] ↩
3. [Nancy Drew is American, so it’s a rook elevator, really.] ↩