Norman Macleod

Norman Alasdair Macleod (born December 6, 1927 in Glasgow , † October 2, 1991 in Ross-on-Wye ) was a Scottish chess composer .

chess

Norman Macleod (right, with Bo Lindgren ) at the final banquet of the PCCC conference in 1990 in Benidorm

In 1983, Norman Macleod stated that he learned chess from the Children's Encyclopaedia at the age of twelve . When he was teaching his brother Iain to play chess, Macleod was already inventing new rules. In high school, Macleod won every tournament. In his senior year in 1944, Macleod was the school's chess club president.

Macleod regularly attended the Glasgow Chess Club , which was close to the school. There he played with DM MacIsaac , the chess columnist for the Glasgow Herald , and William Fairhurst . Here Macleod also met Comins Mansfield , who also belonged to the club. Macleod was subsequently multiple club champions and took second place twice at the Scottish Championship. On the third board behind Fairhurst and James Macrae Aitken Macleod took part in the 1958 Chess Olympiad in Munich , where he scored 7 out of 16 points. During a trip to the United States in 1964, Macleod won the Maryland Championship . Yet for Macleod, chess games were only a pastime, he preferred the composition.

During a trip to Paris , Macleod met Nicolas Rossolimo .

In 1980 Macleod was appointed by FIDE as an international arbiter for two-move, three-move and multi-move. In 1984 the title of International Master of Chess Composition followed. With the 1992 FIDE album , the late Macleod reached the criteria for the grandmaster title for chess composition . He was then awarded posthumously on September 3, 1993. PCCC President Klaus Wenda personally took care of the actual awarding of the title.

From 1979 to 1981 Macleod was President of the British Chess Problem Society (BCPS) committee.

From the early 1980s onwards, Macleod used the Forsyth notation to manage problems sent to him as a clerk in a computer database. He developed a chess solver program that he later compiled in two versions for the Sinclair QL . However, due to the complexity of the task and technical limitations, the software was unsuitable for longer problems. Macleod was also the first program developer to compose chess problems. Using the trial and error method, his program generated all positions of the given material and then determined sequences of moves that led to mate or stalemate. Hardware limitations and complexity allowed Macleod to only machine positions with three stones. The program was a forerunner of modern endgame database generators.

In the late 1980s, Macleod was a member of the BCPS committee that founded The Problemist magazine . CG Rains, a former member, helped implement this idea. With the support of Paul Valois, Brian Stephenson later took over the magazine to the present day.

In the last months of his life, Norman Macleod could no longer move well due to illness. Nevertheless, he worked until the end in chess composition for the magazine The Problemist . At the meeting of the Permanent Commission for Chess Composition (PCCC) in Benidorm in the summer of 1990, Macleod led the British ransom team. At the BCPS meeting in March 1991 Macleod was already seriously ill, but took part in all events again. He competed in the solving tournament from bed.

In total, Norman Macleod created more than 1000 chess compositions. The following example won 1st prize in a Yugoslav magazine.

Norman Macleod
MAT, 1983 , 1st prize

	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H
8th									8th
7th									7th
6th									6th
5									5
4th									4th
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H

White moves and mates in 8 moves

Solution:
1. Kd5? c1D! 2. Nxc1 Qxb2 does not lead to the goal because of the opening of the second row. Therefore
1. Ke4 – f3! Rh5 – h4 With the preliminary plan, the white king eliminates Black's defense.
2. Kf3 – g2 d3xe2
3. Kg2 – f3 c2 – c1S Black cannot take back his moves.
4. Kf3 – e4 Rh4 – h5 switchback (return of the king to his original square)
5. Ke4 – d5 Da3 – b4 Now the main plan works.
6. Kd5 – c6 Qb4 – e7 The withdrawal check is inevitable.
7. KC6-b5 + Qe7-b7
8. Lh1xb7 matt

Profession and private life

Norman Macleod was the son of Murdoch and Mary Macleod. He had a brother named Iain, three years his junior, who supported him in his activities to the end.

Macleod attended the High School of Glasgow, where his phenomenal memory meant he had no difficulty with the subject matter. In the fifth grade (roughly equivalent to the German 12th grade) Macleod passed seven of the highest final exams. During his school days, he achieved a level of competence in many occupations. In addition to a phenomenal memory, Macleod later also stood out for his absent-mindedness.

Norman Macleod was friends with conjurer Tom Shepherd and joined The Magic Circle even before he left school. Magic, along with his other interests and pastimes that Macleod had during that time, continued to be interested in Macleod until his death.

After school Macleod studied science at Glasgow University , where he almost failed due to lack of motivation. After that, Macleod went to the Army Education Corps of National Service and made it up to sergeant . In the Ministry of National Insurance Macleod worked briefly at the suggestion of his father. Eventually Macleod found a position at the State Department brokered by CHOD Alexander , who at the time was a veteran of GCHQ's military cryptographic spy branch in Bletchley . Macleod was eventually positioned for the GCHQ in Cheltenham . Little is known about Macleod's secret service activities, but evidence points to research in the field of computer engineering, research and development. In 1983 Macleod left the secret service. He later developed training software in C for a commercial organization.

Daphne Maines worked in the British Embassy in Washington in 1954. She met Norman Macleod there when he was arrested by the police for being drunk. The two got together and married, which resulted in Macleod moving to Timperley , close to Daphne's family. In 1957 the couple had a daughter named Fiona and in 1961 another daughter named Heather. Fiona is now married to David Ion, from which three daughters emerged. Heather and John Parrott have a daughter and two sons.

Macleod was operated on in November 1990 after a cancerous ulcer was found. In the hospital he was visited by many chess friends. However, the cancer returned and affected other parts of the body. When Macleod could no longer move, radiation therapy was given at the Cheltenham hospital. He was then transferred to the Dilke Memorial Hospital in the Forest of Dean. After three weeks, Macleod was discharged and had to be moved between the bed and the wheelchair using a hoist. Still, Macleod tried to make the most of his life.

Norman Macleod died on October 2, 1991 in the presence of his entire family.

Other interests

Macleod's other interests included birdwatching, color photography - Macleod developed the pictures at home - bookbinding, beer-making, wine-making, fishing, bridge, music, the Bible, and theology - Daphne's brother Noel suspected that Macleod was primarily interested in ceremonies - culinary arts and predictable gambling (such as horse racing).

Macleod knew about the life dates and works of many musicians, attended many concerts with his wife and joined the Bach Choir of Cheltenham with her. He owned a large collection of phonograms and acquired expertise in many pieces of music. Macleod, for example, had six versions of the Magic Flute that he compared and analyzed. In the last months of Macleod's life, he and his brother used a lot of money won in horse racing to expand the CD collection.

The beginning of the 1970s was Macleod member of the Masonic Lodge Cheltenham Masonic Lodge and became the Worshipful Master .

Web links

Commons : Norman Macleod  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual references and sources

1. ↑ Norman Macleod's results at the Chess Olympiads on olimpbase.org (English)
2. ↑ Grand master for chess compositions
3. ^ ^{A b} Alan McGowan (editor): Norman Alasdair Macleod at chessscotland.com (English). Retrieved March 19, 2014.

• David Friedgood : NAM: A biographical sketch , in: John Rice : The Chessboard Adventures of Norman Macleod . feenschach , Aachen 1997
• Marjan Kovačević : Norman The Original , in: MatPlus 21-24, Yugoslavia 1999, (online version at matplus.org ( memento from April 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) ( ZIP ; 4.2 MB) at macleod.htm)