Kentish Mercury, 1892

The tourney was announced as a Problem and Solution Tourney. No particular requirement for problems were set. Based on published problems, #2, #3, and #4 were received; additional problems seem to have been selected by the column editor. No specific types or number of prizes were announced.

Competitors were requested to announce their participation. As the tourney announcement makes very little difference between the composition tourney and the solving tourney, it is not clear if this concerned only competitors in the solving tourney.

The only requirement that was specific for compositions was that solvers were invited to constitute themselves the judges and select one or two [ problems ] for special commendations.

Twenty-eight problems (prb. 169–195) were published for the solution tourney, including problems accepted for the composition tourney. No anonymization was requested or practised: the names of the composers or the signatures or pseudonyms they used themselves were published with the problem diagrams. Eleven of the published problems were excluded from the composition tourney, as they were reproductions, faulty, or otherwise not suitable.

At the end of the tourney period, solvers were invited to send their opinions, but there was no account given of them, not even how many votes were received. Although the judgement was said to be a solver's award, the report asks Are solvers' judgements reliable? and reports that the problems (anonymously) were also submitted to the leading experts of the day, as well as to J. Stent, whose evaluations (40 points for construction, 30 for difficulty, and additional points for presence of variations) were reported to agree with both the opinion of the solvers and the consulted experts, and so were reported in additional detail.

Adjudication appears to be based on Stent's scores, and three three-movers and and three two-movers were identified as best, and presumably also as prize winners, although the column is quiet on prizes in the composition tourney.


The identities of White Knight (of Reading) and P. G. L. F. (of Lymington) were not revealed. The latter is almost certainly the signature of P. G. L. Fothergill. Another competitor also appears to have competed under a psedonym or signature: Hereward.