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Endgame: Chapter 13–Epilogue

Biographer Frank Brady chronicles the meteoric rise and astounding fall of chess prodigy Bobby Fischer.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Chapters 1–2, Chapters 3–4, Chapters 5–9, Chapters 10–12, Chapter 13–Epilogue
40 words 22 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

  1. accost
    approach and speak to someone aggressively or insistently
    His continual fear of being arrested, killed, accosted, or insulted fatigued him, and that may be one of the reasons he slept ten or twelve hours every night.
  2. respite
    a relief from harm or discomfort
    The Polgars had offered Bobby friendship and a respite, but it was now clear that the press was aware of his specific whereabouts.
  3. kafkaesque
    having a surreal, nightmarish, and oppressive quality
    He said that he identified with the character played by Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, that he sometimes felt as though he lived in a Kafkaesque world where he—Bobby—like Truman, was the only honest person in the world and everyone else was an actor.
  4. expound
    add details to clarify an idea
    Before he was done, he gave thirty-five radio broadcast interviews—they all found their way online—most of them through a small public radio station in the Philippines and some lasting almost two hours, expounding on his theory that he was a victim of a conspiracy that involved a Jewish cabal, the U.S. government, the Russians, Robert Ellsworth, and the Bekins Storage company.
  5. denigrate
    attack the good name and reputation of someone
    It was as if he had a form of Tourette’s syndrome where, plagued by a temporary storm in his mind, he couldn’t stop himself from denigrating Jews in the vilest terms: His hate rhetoric just spewed out and he couldn’t—nor did he want to—control it.
  6. polemic
    a verbal or written attack, especially of a belief or dogma
    Bobby’s polemic was a full-frontal attack on a suffering nation.
  7. vitriol
    abusive or venomous language to express blame or censure
    Since he was never questioned or stopped at any airport or customs entry point to any country, he felt free to persist with his broadcast vitriol.
  8. ingratiate
    gain favor with somebody by deliberate efforts
    Libya—Mu’ammar Gadhafi was attempting to ingratiate himself with the United States and couldn’t take the chance of antagonizing President Bush.
  9. stalwart
    dependable
    While Palsson was en route to Japan, a group of stalwart Icelanders met in Reykjavik to discuss whether there was any way asylum could be offered to Fischer.
  10. ardent
    characterized by strong enthusiasm
    All of the members of the committee were eminent Icelanders and ardent chess enthusiasts: Gudmundur Thorarinsson, former member of parliament and the principal organizer of the 1972 Fischer–Spassky match; Magnus Skulason, a psychiatrist; Gardar Sverrisson, a political scientist; Helgi Olafsson, a grandmaster; and Einar Einarsson, a bank executive.
  11. invective
    abusive language used to express blame or censure
    Most of his vitriol was directed toward the Jews (“absolute pigs”), with a slight softening of his invective against the United States.
  12. de facto
    existing, whether with lawful authority or not
    Immediately, the media began implying that the alleged marriage was just a ploy to help Fischer obtain his release and live in Japan, but Suzuki disagreed: “It was already a de-facto marriage,” she said.
  13. morose
    showing a brooding ill humor
    The situation remained unresolved, however, and as Bobby reached his sixty-second birthday in his cell, he was morose.
  14. genuflect
    bend the knees and bow in a servile manner
    When Bobby’s plane touched down at Reykjavik Airport, and he stepped on the tarmac, he didn’t kneel down and kiss the ground—at least, not literally. Metaphorically, however, he genuflected to the land of the Vikings.
  15. thoroughfare
    a public road from one place to another
    Bobby Fischer’s gaze ricocheted from the partially cobblestoned road of Klapparstigur Lane, where he lived, to the slight rise up to the busy thoroughfare of Laugavegur, with its little shops, then back to the BMWs and Volvos parked at meters and the blue-eyed and cherry-cheeked Icelanders heading back to work after lunch.
  16. terse
    brief and to the point
    As for what people thought about his dress, he was cynical and terse: “That’s their problem.”
  17. discourse
    extended verbal expression in speech or writing
    He could talk about such subjects as the French Revolution and the Siberian gulags, the philosophy of Nietzsche, and the discourses of Disraeli.
  18. extradition
    surrender of an accused by one state or country to another
    Most important, he had no intention of leaving Iceland, because of the threat of extradition to the United States.
  19. unequivocally
    in an unambiguous manner
    Bobby peered over the chessboard, scanning and evaluating—attempting not just to suggest a Russian conspiracy, but to prove it unequivocally.
  20. cabal
    a plot to carry out some harmful or illegal act
    Bobby’s belief in a Russian cabal involving the two Ks had become his crusade, and he’d been airing his views all over the world for several years. He never wavered from claiming that all of the games in the 1985 match were fixed and prearranged move-by-move.
  21. incontrovertible
    impossible to deny or disprove
    This was statistically unusual, but not totally improbable, and was certainly not incontrovertible evidence of a plot.
  22. specious
    plausible but false
    A scientist at the Center for Bioformatics and Molecular Biostatistics of the University of California, Mark Segal, proved mathematically that such a charge was specious and that the moves in the 1985 contest were more statistically likely to have occurred than Fischer’s own shutouts of Taimanov and Larsen, and his near total defeat of Petrosian.
  23. obsequious
    attentive in an ingratiating or servile manner
    His first break was with his obsequious bodyguard Saemi Palsson.
  24. travail
    use of physical or mental energy; hard work
    Bobby had already stopped talking to Saemi and taking calls from Gudmundsson, and his friends began referring to his ex-bodyguard as a “Judas” for trying to make a film that was more about Saemi than about Bobby’s travails.
  25. syllogism
    reasoning in which a conclusion is derived from two premises
    His illogical syllogism went something like this:
    Saemi cheated and betrayed me.
    Saemi is an Icelander.
    Therefore all Icelanders are cheaters and betrayers.
  26. enmity
    a state of deep-seated ill-will
    Even key stalwarts felt his sting: Helgi Olaffson for not tolerating Bobby’s anti-Semitic enmity, and for asking too many questions about the “old chess” (“He must be writing a book”); David Oddsson for reasons unknown, even to Oddsson himself; and, surprisingly, Gardar Sverrisson, his closest friend, spokesman, and neighbor, because Gardar didn’t inform him about a silly and harmless photograph of Bobby’s shoes that appeared in Morgunbladid.
  27. foreboding
    a feeling of evil to come
    It was as if he were a changeling, a troubled child not so secretly adopted by the Icelanders, but with love and without foreboding.
  28. pontifical
    puffed up with vanity
    “I am a genius,” he said shortly after arriving back in Iceland, not pontifically but sincerely.
  29. liturgy
    a rite or body of rites prescribed for public worship
    Gardar Sverrisson, his friend in Reykjavik, was Catholic (one of the few: 95 percent of Icelanders are Lutheran), and Bobby began to ask him questions about the liturgy, the adoration of saints, the theological mysteries, and other aspects of the religion.
  30. cursory
    hasty and without attention to detail; not thorough
    He went to a doctor and requested a cursory, nonintrusive examination, but was told that only a blood test would enable the doctor to evaluate his kidney function.
  31. gravitas
    formality, dignity, or seriousness
    Skulason is a gentle and intense man with a gravitas that is arresting. In his conversations, he appears to be more a philosopher than someone with a medical and psychological background, quoting Hegel as much as Freud, Plato as much as Jung.
  32. unpretentious
    not showy or flashy
    An unpretentious Lutheran church—a chapel, really—that looks like a set for an Ingmar Bergman drama and can seat only about fifty parishioners, guards the site of the cemetery.
  33. dirge
    a song or hymn of mourning as a memorial to a dead person
    There was no dirge, no incense, no requiem, although hymns were sung in the small church.
  34. requiem
    a song or hymn of mourning as a memorial to a dead person
    There was no dirge, no incense, no requiem, although hymns were sung in the small church.
  35. behoove
    be appropriate or necessary
    It behooved them, therefore, to try to determine the legitimacy of the other claims.
  36. exhume
    dig up for reburial or for medical investigation
    Exhuming Bobby’s corpse was impractical for many months: His grave was covered with snow, and it was difficult to dig through Iceland’s frozen soil until late spring.
  37. forensics
    the use of scientific techniques in criminal investigations
    The samples were packaged and shipped to a forensics laboratory in Germany for testing; the Icelandic DNA laboratory was ruled out to avoid any possibility of compromise or conflict.
  38. putative
    purported
    With Jinky no longer being a putative heir, the remaining contenders for the estate were Miyoko Watai, the Targ nephews, and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
  39. negligible
    not worth considering
    Had the estate been negligible, one wonders whether there would have been such a fight over who is the true heir.
  40. pittance
    an inadequate payment
    If the U.S. Internal Revenue Service is able to collect Bobby’s back taxes and fines, the multimillion-dollar “purse” the competitors are vying for will have been seriously reduced. What was once a fortune may become a pittance, a lost game for the heirs.
Created on Thu Aug 18 10:08:47 EDT 2022 (updated Fri Sep 09 14:00:16 EDT 2022)

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