The Nutcracker

John Saunders, editor and archivist of BritBase, offered a plausible decipherment of the scoresheet of a game played in the round 14 of the 6th Women’s World Chess Championship Tournament between Vera Frantsevna Menchik and Mary Dinorah Gilchrist, which was handed to Czech chess historian Jan Kalendovský, and forwarded from him to his readers as “one more nut to crack”.

Vera Frantsevna Menchik – Mary Dinorah Gilchrist
6th Women’s World Championship; Stockholm, August 1937
French Defence C00

Notes by John Saunders.

1. c4 e6 2. e4 d6 3. d4 Nd7 4. Nc3 Ngf6 5. Be3 Be7 6. f3 0-0 7. Qd2 c5 8. Nge2 cxd4 9. Bxd4 Ne5 10. Ng3 Nc6 11. Be3 Bd7 12. Be2 Rc8 13. 0-0 Ne5 14. b3 a6

15. Rfc1. Possible reconstruction, assuming Black recorded the wrong Rook move at this point (she wrote QR-B1).
15. ... Qc7 16. Qe1 Qb8 17. h3. And now we need to interpolate two half-moves which are missing from the score...
17. ... Bc6 18. Qf2. ... And now continue:
18. ... Nfd7

19. Nh5. “N-R4” is written but could be an error.
19. ... Ng6 20. Bd4 f6 21. b4 b5 22. cxb5 axb5

23. Qf1. This is why the f1 Rook has to move on move 15 — to make this square available for the Queen.
23. ... d5 24. exd5 exd5 25. Nxb5 Bxb5 26. Bxb5 Nde5 27. a3 Nf7 28. Bc6 Nf4 29. Nxf4 Qxf4 30. Qf2 Bd6 31. g3 Qh6 32. Kg2 Nd8 1 : 0.

Courtesy Jan Kalendovský.