Python on a chicken run
QUESTION Did Michael Palin once enter the US illegally from Mexico?
MICHAEL Palin did indeed enter the US illegally from Mexico – momentarily. This occurred during the former Monty Python star’s third BBC travelogue Full Circle With Michael Palin in 1997.
The intention was to make a full anti-clockwise trip around the Pacific Rim. Episode ten of the show saw Palin in Mexico where his guide, Arturo, gave him a guided tour of the Tortilla Curtain, 3metre high corrugated steel barrier between San Diego and Tijuana.
Palin discusses the migrants, who are nicknamed pollos (chickens), as he watches them sneak across the border.
Then, spotting a gap in the fence, he and Arturo climb through. Palin proclaims: ‘Here I am. This is America – no passport, no papers, we are pollos.’
He is visibly nervous when he spots a border patrol and says ‘We’d better leave the Land of the Free pretty quick’ before scampering back under the fence. Mark Holly, London SE12.
QUESTION Who is the world’s highest ever ranked chess player?
THE Elo system is the chess ranking system used by the World Chess Federation. It’s named after Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-born US physics professor.
The Elo rating indicates the position on a scale of chess proficiency through a succession of classes: Class E (below 1,200), Class D (1,200-1,399), Class C (1,400-1,599), Class B (1,600-1,799), Class A (1,8001,999), Expert (2,000-2,199) and Master (2,200 and above).
International grandmasters have a rating of 2,500 or above. The Elo numbers indicate the probable outcome of a match between players of different ratings.
If Magnus Carlsen, the world champion, plays another Grandmaster and wins six games out of ten, his rating stays the same. If he wins seven or more, it goes up; for five or fewer, his rating goes down. After a given match, the spread of games is plugged into Elo’s mathematical formula and rating points are transferred between players. The higher-rated player gains fewer points if he wins than if the lesser player scores an upset. The system has been adopted by other games such as Scrabble and Go.
Under Elo’s system, the highestrated players of all time are Magnus Carlsen (2,882), Garry Kasparov (2,851), Fabiano Caruana (2,844), Levon Aronian (2,830) and Wesley So (2,822). However, Elo is not a measure of the best player of all time. The system is prone to point inflation and you can’t compare players from different eras.
Raymond Keene and Nathan Divinsky established their own rating for their book Warriors Of The Mind. Their best ever players were: 1. Garry Kasparov, 2. Anatoly Karpov, 3. Bobby Fischer, 4. Mikhail Botvinnik, 5. Jose Raul Capablanca.
Jan Mazur, Birmingham.
QUESTION US billionaire Bill Gross is said to have applied principles from the game blackjack to build his hedge fund Pimco. What are these?
FOLLOWING a 1966 car accident, Bill Gross picked up Ed Thorp’s book Beat The Dealer, which mathematically proved that the house advantage in blackjack could be overcome by card counting. Gross practised the technique as he recuperated and, to his surprise, it worked. We went to Las Vegas and turned $200 into $10,000.
He used these skills in investing, outlined in his book: Everything You’ve Heard About Investing Is Wrong! ‘First, spread your risk. Cards run hot and cold, so be prepared. Second, as far as possible know your risks. Quantify them, predict the consequences, and prepare how to react. If you don’t bet too much and if you stay at the table long enough, the odds are high that you are going to go home with some extra money in your pocket.’
Gross notes that the problem with most gamblers is they are emotional, undisciplined and often desperate. The key is to never bet more than 2% of your stake, a principle he has used at Pimco by never over-investing in a single stock.
Jo Bowdler, Halifax.
QUESTION When I was a child, my father would bring home ‘zunzl’ cakes from London’s East End. How are they made?
THEY were not zunzl cakes, but Kunzle cakes. These were named after Christian Kunzle, a Swiss chef who moved to Britain in the 1920s to work at Westminster.
He went on to open a number of restaurants in Birmingham and established a factory in Five Ways, supplying cakes to his restaurants and later to shops. There were many variations but post-war children still drool over the memory of a particular type of Kunzle cake known as the Showboat – a thick chocolate shell containing cake, topped with butter cream and a small chocolate in the centre.
The Kunzle factory expanded after the war under Christian’s son, Ernest, and grandson, George. It moved to Garrett’s Green in 1960 and by 1970 employed 700 people.
The firm was taken over, first by Fullers, and ended up in the hands of Lyons in 1968. Alan Beith, Sutton Coldfield.
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