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Historic go at Princeton’s Fine Hall

In the January 10 edition of the Princeton Alumni Weekly, there is an article by Elyse Graham called "Adventures in Fine Hall: The weirdness of math's golden age."  She writes of the hijinks of the great mathematicians of the 1930s gathering in the Princeton University Mathematics Department and the Institute of Advanced Studies: Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, Kurt Friedrich Gödel, Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl. Speaking of Fine Hall, the center of mathematics at Princeton, she writes, "To blow off steam, many students got into games, as players and creators both.... During the day, a visitor to the common room might see the nation's mathematical brain trust absorbed in games of Go, bridge, double solitaire, or chess, played classic or whimsical variants." She also writes that “A favorite was a double-blind variant of chess called Kriegspiel,” which Terry Benson has adapted for go at his Crazy Go nights each year at the U.S. Go Congress. “The boast went out that Fine Hall ‘could produce a champion in any game that was played sitting down.’” - Ted Terpstra photo (l-r): Luther Eisenhart, Albert Einstein and Walther Mayer