"skittles room" citation from Double-Tongued Dictionary

Catchword: skittles room

Gloss: at the venue of a chess tournament, an area or room where players can play informally, either for fun or to hustle each other for money.

Note: A commenter remarks that he’s known this term for 40 years, which makes it perfect catchword fodder: it does not appear in any of a dozen mainstream dictionaries that I checked.

Filed Under: English, Pastimes & Hobbies, Slang

Part of Speech: n.

Quotation: He went straight to what is known as the “skittles room,” which was not actually a room, but a series of tables where people could play chess for fun before their formal matches. The skittles tables doubled as the gambling pit for several dozen hustlers, who’d come to the tournament not to compete but to ply their trade against skilled players willing to play for high stakes.

Article or Document Title:
“The Days and Knights of Tom Murphy” (URL)

Author:
Wells Tower

Article, Document, Publication, Web Site:
Washington Post

Date of Publication:
Sept. 25, 2007

This catchword has yet to be researched.

Posted 10 Oct 07 | Permalink | Tell a Friend

Comments:

“Skittles room” is long-standing chess slang. I’ve seen it in print since the 1960s, referring to events considerably earlier. A Google search turned up 458,000 hits for it…
by Peter Heck 10 Oct 07, 0818 GMT

Yes, but is it in a mainstream dictionary? That’s the whole point of this site: finding terms that seem to need more work done. It’s about putting them on the record so more attention is paid to them.

Google hits count for nothing unless they are vetted for date, source, accuracy, and context.

by Grant Barrett 10 Oct 07, 1107 GMT

google SKITTLES—Berea College Crafts. the board game is wonderful. most sites list it as a british pub game, but it’s very popular in KY. check it out . . . interesting that the word shows up in this context . . .
by adale o'brien 11 Oct 07, 0424 GMT

About Skittles room:
An interesting quotation of Garry Kasparov, in Batsford Chess Openings (1989). He pooh-poohed a move in the “English opening” sequence with “chess is not skittles”
ROO-BOOKAROO, Paris, France.

by Roo_Bookaroo 11 Oct 07, 1142 GMT

Point taken about Google hits.

This is a bit more precise: Edward Winter, a well-respected chess historian, citing an article in Chess Review by the grandmaster Saveilly Tartakover:

“below is an excerpt from ‘End-game secrets’, on pages 328-329 of the November 1951 issue: ‘This position is from a skittles game played recently in Paris…’”

(URL)

So it would appear the term “skittles” for casually played chess was sufficiently common for a writer to use it, in a chess-oriented publication, without needing to define it by the early 1950s.

by Peter Heck 18 Oct 07, 0519 GMT