34-35 LilianFollowup_Chess mag - 21_6_10 11/04/2020 13:52 Page 34
The Infant
Queen of Chess
Brian Gosling reports on the solving competition he held to celebrate Lilian Baird
In an earlier article in the November 2018
CHESS, I described the background to
Christopher Ravilious’s book Lilian: An Episode
in Chess Problem History. Here I would like to
discuss her ties with Devon and some issues
that arose during my work on the book, as
well as report on a solving competition based
on Lilian’s earlier problems which contains a
story about the late Pal Benko.
As a pastime, chess problem solving and
composing in the UK reached its peak in the
1890s with the publication of F. R. Gittens’s
book The Chess Bouquet. Here there are
biographical sketches of Mrs W.J. Baird and her
daughter, Lilian, together with those of many
other composers and editors. It is sad to reflect
that when this book was published in 1897,
Lilian’s composing career was almost over.
The story with which we are concerned
begins with Thomas Winter-Wood (1818-
1905). He was the creator and first President
of Plymouth Chess Club, and had three children,
Carslake, Edward and Edith, who inherited his
love of chess and became composers. Carslake
was the club’s first Secretary and Treasurer, and
Edward was also a founder member. Edith
became the most famous in the chess problem
world and I documented her work in the
aforementioned article.
Edith married the Deputy Inspector-
General of Naval Hospitals, W.J. Baird. He was
often away on professional duty, so Edith and
their daughter Lilian had time to indulge in
their love of chess. The family home was 14
College Terrace, Brighton, a fine Victorian
building which survives to this day, but has
been turned into flats.
Close ties were kept with the family in
Devon. Lilian spent several childhood holidays
with her Winter-Wood relatives and
continued to visit them when they moved
from Plymouth to Paignton. A group
photograph does exist of Lilian attending a
county Cornwall versus Devon county match
at Truro in 1902, but unfortunately it is not in
the Ravilious book.
Bob Jones has touched on the influence of
the Winter-Woods in a past article (see the
September 2015 CHESS), and Martin Quinn,
secretary of Plymouth Chess Club, has
written a fine history of Plymouth Chess Club
(see tinyurl.com/woxeady), which covers
34
nicely the huge influence of the Winter-
Woods on Plymouth and Devon chess
through three generations.
On one night, in 1951, a little lady walked
into Plymouth Chess Club and offered them a
set of silver chess pieces that she had
inherited from her grandfather. No one had
much idea who she was. It was Lilian, now
Mrs Strong (Lilian’s married name), with the
grandfather she referred to being Thomas
Winter-Wood. The club had the chess pieces
made into a shield, called the Strong Trophy in
Lilian’s honour, and it is still competed for in
their annual knockout competition.
Like her mother, Lilian became an avid
chess composer. Nearly all her 51
compositions can be found in her mother’s
cuttings books, in which besides her own
work, she collected her daughter’s
compositions. These books, now in the library
of the British Chess Problem Society, were
the main source of Christopher Ravilious’s
study of Lilian.
The other source is the collection of ‘Letters
to Lilian’, which I personally find fascinating and
which gives a wonderful insight into the unique
life of a bright Victorian girl problemist. The
letters, 38 in all, were transcribed by
Christopher from the originals, and are now in
private hands. They were written by adoring
problemists and editors, and communicate the
charm of the lost world of the 1890s. Her list
of correspondents reads like a list of Who's
Who of the 19th Century chess problem
world, including the likes of Charles Gilberg,
Mrs. F F. Rowland, and H.F.L Meyer.
The letters must have meant a lot to Lilian
because she held on to them for nearly 80
years. On reading Lilian: An Episode in Chess
Problem History please do not miss the
footnotes because they contain many titbits
about the celebrities of chess.
In readiness for new kindle and paperback
editions, I produced a ChessBase file of the
compositions and checked each one for
soundness. I was not expecting any errors
because I knew that Lilian’s mother had a
reputation for soundness, a trait she would
have passed on to her daughter. Her work,
published in chess-columns world-wide, was
scrutinised by critics and admirers alike. To
my surprise I came across this:
Lilian Baird (39*)
Manchester Weekly Times, 1894
Mate in 2
* The number in brackets (39) refers to the
number of the problem in Chris Ravilious’ book.
The solution runs 1 Ëh7!, and if 1...c4
2 Îxd6#, 1...Êc4 2 Ëe4#, 1...Êd5 2 Ëd3#,
and 1...d5 2 Îh4#.
However, 1 Îxd6+ Êe4 2 Ëg4# is an
alternate solution which makes the problem
unsound in this setting. In the original there
was a white pawn at g5 which eliminates this
second solution.
Here the problem is unsound because there
are two solutions. A sound problem always has
one key move which leads to the solution. This
‘cook’ can easily be removed by having a white
pawn at g5. This now rules out the second
solution beginning with 1 Îxd6+. The original
was checked from the newspaper’s archives
and a white pawn was present at g5, so
someone had wrongly transcribed Lilian’s
original problem which was sound.
I decided to keep the diagram as it was
because I had an idea which I will mention
later. It is interesting to note that the verb ‘to
cook’, meaning to find a second solution, was
first used by Kling and Horwitz in the August
16th 1851 issue of The Chess Player
(Correspondents section).
Towards the end of 2018 I decided to
create some interest in Lilian by holding an
online solving competition using her
compositions in questions numbered 1-4.
May 2020
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With hindsight the first was difficult and
never answered. The competitor had to
identify the unsound (cooked) problem
between numbers 30-40. The answer is
no.39, as covered above. The idea behind this
was to get potential competitors to read
Christopher’s book.
For the remaining three questions, I
uploaded three diagrams. The competitor had
to solve the three problems composed by
Lilian, who was then younger than 10 years
old. The winner would be the first registered
entrant returning the correct answers. These
were problems 4, 5 and 8 in the book, which
I have included at the end of this article.
Hopefully you will try and solve them, and
perhaps even time yourself!
The winner of the 2018 Lilian Solving
competition was Robert Miller from
Washington DC. Based on the time stamps it
took him 12 minutes to solve the problems.
This was from the time I posted them online
to the time I received the answers. Phew,
that is some going! I knew I was dealing with
a chess talent, so I got Robert to talk about
his past, especially the time he played in an
Open tournament in New Jersey in the late
1980s and met Pal Benko.
“I stopped playing tournament chess, for
one reason or another, when I was about 30.
I reached a USCF rating of 2400, so I was a
strong amateur player. But I stupidly never
involved myself with compositions – I didn’t
think they were ‘real’ chess. I missed out on a
lot of fun and beauty!
“In the U.S. we always had the example of
Pal Benko as a world-class (at one time) GM
who was also prominent in the composition
world. I played him once and achieved a draw,
primarily because on the board next to us there
was a rare king and rook versus king and three
connected passed pawns ending. Benko was
more interested in it than in our game! He
www.chess.co.uk
Lilian Solving Contest
Lilian Baird (4)
Illustrated London News,
24th December 1890
Mate in 2
Lilian Baird (5)
The Field, 27th December 1890
ended up writing about our neighbours’ game
in one of his Chess Life columns. Well, one
thing led to another and I survived with a draw.
“After the game, Benko graciously
analysed with me, briefly. He quickly came up
with a way that Black could simply dominate
the opening with an impregnable centre. He
waited for me to come up with ideas to
support the opening I had ventured (a Larsen
idea with White). I couldn’t. It was amazing to
sit across the board from him – someone
who had spent his life thinking about chess.”
The Winter-Woods were certainly a
remarkable family in the chess world. The
grave of Lilian’s maternal grandparents can be
found at Collaton St Mary, near Paignton. The Mate in 2
Church had connections with Rev H.F. Lyte
who wrote the famous hymn ‘Abide with Me’.
Lilian’s final years were spent in Brighton Lilian Baird (8)
not far from her childhood home where she Leeds Mercury, 31st January 1891
had spent many happy hours with her mother
exploring the beauty of chess. In her youth
she was known as the ‘Infant Queen of
Chess’. The editor of Western Magazine and
Portfolio had dubbed Lilian ‘the Infant Queen
of Chess’ in reference to her mother’s already
established title ‘the Queen of Chess’. She
died on 26th May 1977, a few months short
of her 96th birthday. No grave has yet been
found.
My thanks to Bob Jones, Martin Quinn,
Tony Tatam of Plymouth Chess Club, and
Robert Miller of Washington DC, for their
help with this article. Lilian: An Episode in
Chess Problem History by Christopher
Ravilious is available in Kindle and paperback Mate in 2
formats retailing at £6.00.
Solutions:
(8) 1 Íf8!, and if 1...Êc5 2 Ëxc6#, 1...Êd5 2 Ëb5#, 1...c5 2 Ëa6#, and 1...Ìg6/Ìd5 2 Ëxc6#.
(5) 1 Ëc3!, and if 1...Êa2 2 Ëxa3#, 1...a2 2 Ëxb2#, 1...Íxc3 2 Îxa3#, and 1...Íb4 2 Ëxb2#.
and 1...Êe2 2 Ëd1#.
(4) 1 Êc1!, and if 1...Ìd1 2 Ëxd1#, 1...Ìxd3+ 2 Ìxd3#, 1...Ìa4 2 Ëd1#, 1...e2 2 Ëb4#,
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