"WHAT Kind Of Chess Did You Say?" Dept

I figure this is an English-language blog and so I usually keep my Russian-based amusement to myself; but I note that the publishers of this article seem to have had English-language search engines in mind when they wrote the headline.

For that rarest of birds, the Russian-challenged American, I will explain three things, just so you'll get the joke I'm sharing with Russian-speaking friends.

1. The headline is "Sexual Chess," or perhaps "Sexy Chess." When Anya and Kinya get back from California maybe Anya can tell me which translation is better.

2. "Sexualniye shakhmati" is, in Russian letters, "Сексуальные шахматы," -- but since even Russian teenagers are used to chasing around the Web in English, you'll get way fewer young men searching for "секс" than you will for "sex." Thus the headline's first three letters are left in English: "Sexуальные шахматы." This actually confused me and it took a while for me to figure out what it meant...thus proving that I'm not as smart as I think and not as sex-obsessed as my wife thinks...

3. In case you're curious, this is an article about Maria Manakova, a young Russian chess master (chess mistress?) who has decided that the sport of chess is just not popular enough among young Russian men, and has therefore chosen the marketing ploy of appearing more or less nude in a big spread in a Russian magazine. Either that or she did it for the money. Don't worry, the picture accompanying this particular article is quite decent.