Postcards, chess and encryption

 I've written from time to time about cryptography and postcards. and how in the nineteenth century especially, some people would try and obfuscate the content of what was essentially an open medium to conceal what was being said, perhaps to conceal an assignation or other private arrangement.

Sometimes they would write the message in Latin or Greek, or use a simple substitution cipher, or else use some agreed set of code words to convey meaning.

However there is a subset of postcards that at first sight look to be encrypted but aren't.

People would sometimes play chess against each other by writing their moves on postcards and mailing them to their playing partner - for example, think of a clergyman in an isolated parish who had no one to play with, might play chess by post with a former playing partner now living elsewhere.

After all postcards were cheap to send, and provided the postal service was reasonably efficient it would be possible manage a couple of moves a week. Usually these postcards contain a couple of lines of conventional greeting and a chess move in algebraic notation.

You used to be able to see examples of chess notation in use in the chess columns of the more heavyweight newspapers, but nowadays chess columns have mostly gone the way of all flesh.

However, people still play chess with remote partners, but usually today they use a dedicated chess server, although some people have played chess by email or text message using chess notation.

Besides postcards with a little string of algebraic notation there are other more complex specialist postcards, often with a chessboard grid, produced by chess clubs for people playing chess by post.

Searching on ebay and etsy for examples, most seem to originate from the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe - no surprises there, the communists always took chess seriously, and date from before 1989.

I'm going to make a wild surmise here, that people in Eastern Europe playing chess by correspondence during the post war socialist period (a) felt it was safer to belong to a recognised chess club and (b) use an 'official' chess postcard to avoid attracting the attention of the security apparatus - after all no one would have wanted a visit from the Ministry of Certain Things as a result of an innocent chess game ...