Cleveland Leader, 1876

The chess column of Cleveland Leader moved to Cleveland Sunday Morning Voice between 1876-12-21 and 1877-02-04. From this date, the column usually refers to the tourney as The Voice Tourney.

On December 7, 1876, as the tourney closes, 83 problems are stated to have been received. 67 problems are published: the balance probably being made up of problems found to be faulty on first examination. The judge's report disagrees with the number of received problems: it says that 91 problems were entered, 38 of which were found to be faulty.

The judge observes that he was almost at a loss to choose the best of problems 36 and 37 (both entereed under the motto Press on). If they should prove to be by the same author (which the use of the same motto made probable), he would have to choose another for the second prize. This suggests that there was an unpublished(?) understanding that a prize winner could only receive one prize. As the judge says It is not improbable that [the 2nd prize winner] will prove more popular than [nos. 36 and 37], but it can hardly be doubted, for all that, that Nos. 36 and 37 are more truly great, there is a relatively clear expression of ranking between the named problems.

Oddly enough, problem 36 (the non-prize winner) it is not on the list of problems receiving an honorary mention; it was published after the prize-winners on 1877-11-25, but before the hm. was published the following week. It has been entered as a 'special mention' in the award list above, to reflect its special position as 'better than second prize but (apparently) excluded from being awarded a prize'.


The second-prize winning problem by S. Loyd is very similar to a problem by Shinkman. A. C. White (in Sam Loyd and his Chess Problems, p. 85) notes that Shinkman privately asked Carpenter if his problem had been anticipated in Oct. 1877, six weeks after the Cleveland Leader Tourney had been closed for US participants. Carpenter does not draw any attention to this coincidence in his report, but is seems unlikely that he did not notice it.

* According to part 10 of F. M. Teed's series American Problem Composers (American Chess Magazine, 2/11 (May, 1899), p. 459 ) the pseudonym Marc was used by Chas. [=Charles] L. Fitch in his early career as composer. (See also Gaige: Chess Personalia, p. 120.)