Submitted for your approval: a garden that exists between the spheres, where the great masters of chess walk among eternal positions. In this garden, two men are about to discover that power is not the same as reliability, and that the most dangerous teacher is not one who is wrong, but one whose reasoning cannot be penetrated. Their names: Mikhail Tal, the magician from Riga, who sees combinations where others see only chaos; and Jeremy Silman, the teacher who built his reputation on translating the incomprehensible into principles ordinary players could use. Both men have spent their lives making chess understandable. Today they'll meet something that resists all understanding—not because it's weak, but because its mind is sealed. Location: that strange territory we call... the Twilight Zone.
Morning in the Garden. Mikhail Tal and Jeremy Silman approach a stone table where a gnome sits studying a chessboard. He wears a pointed red cap and has a long white beard that reaches his belt. His boots are leather, well-worn from walking through forests that existed before the invention of chess. The masters call him Eldar, though whether that is his true name or simply what he has always been called, no one remembers.
Silman stops a few paces away. There's tension in his posture.
"Eldar," he says, his voice carrying the patient frustration of a teacher who's hit a wall, "yesterday you told me this position was winning for White. You showed me a plan—reroute the knight from d2 to f5 via e4, swing the rook from a1 to g3, tuck the king on h2. Twenty quiet moves. I asked you the obvious questions: which pieces are better placed than their counterparts? What imbalances favor us? What's our strategic goal? You never explained the logic. When I played it last night, my opponent castled queenside instead of kingside, and suddenly nothing made sense. I lost by move thirty-five."
Eldar looks up. His expression doesn't change. "Then you failed to understand the plan."
"I played your idea, and I just couldn't get it to work. It seemed like nonsense."
"Then you executed incorrectly. Or failed to see the point."
"But what was the point? That's what I'm asking. You gave me twenty moves but no explanation of what they were meant to accomplish. When the position deviated from what you showed me, I had nothing to guide me. No principle, no logic..."
The gnome studies his board without emotion. "The plan is clear. If you cannot see this, the limitation is yours."
"Or the plan was nonsense to begin with. How would I know? When you explained your reasoning, it seemed like nonsense. For all I know, you were just making it up."
"It was the only favorable move."
"But were you right? Can you even tell me? You said it was winning. I lost. Either you were wrong, or I misplayed, or the position was different than you thought. How do we know which?"
The gnome continues studying his board. "Eldar always wins."
Tal steps forward, his voice gentle, "My small friend, last week you showed me a sacrifice—the queen for two pieces, leading to an attack. I've lived my whole life in sacrifices, you know. The feeling when the pieces dance together, when everything flows toward the king like a river finding its course. You said the position afterward was winning. I played it in a simultaneous exhibition. My opponent found a quiet defensive move, and eventually I had to accept a draw. I wanted to understand what I'd missed, some hidden current in the position. But when I asked you why the sacrifice worked, you simply said 'the position evaluates favorably.' That tells me nothing. Whwat was the idea behind the sacrifice?"
"The sacrifice was sound."
"But your plan was not comprehensible, my friend. When I sacrifice a piece, I can explain what I'm hoping for—the exposed king, the open lines, the coordination of my pieces. Even if I'm wrong, at least you can follow my thinking. But your ideas are unclear. What are we supposed to do with them?"
"The sacrifice was favorable. What you did with the position is your concern."
Consider the gnome—a being who has never lost a game to any human, whose pronouncements are delivered with absolute confidence, who claims to see the most forcing moves into a position forty moves deep. One might assume such a creature possesses genuine chess mastery. But here's the uncomfortable question: what if he doesn't? What if his victories come from fairy magic that has nothing to do with chess? What if his pronouncements are meaningless noise? Or what if he simply has nothing to teach us that we can comprehend? The gnome's power is undeniable. But power is not the same as wisdom. And without access to his reasoning, without some window into his mind, our travelers cannot tell the difference.
A young student who has been watching speaks up eagerly. "But Master Gnome, you've never lost a game! You must understand chess better than anyone!"
Silman turns sharply. "Does he? When someone teaches you a principle—say, 'control the center'—they can explain why. The center controls more squares, it gives your pieces mobility, it restricts your opponent's options. You can understand the mechanism. But Eldar? He just announces moves. I can't see into his mind. I can't trace how he gets from the position to the conclusion. He might be seeing profound patterns. He might be seeing nothing at all. His mind is opaque to me."
"But he wins!"
"Winning proves you made better moves than your opponent," Tal says softly. "It doesn't explain why they were better. Eldar could be calculating forty moves deep, or he could be using a manner of thinking that has nothing to do with chess principles at all, at least not in a way we could understand them. His mind is closed to us. We cannot see inside."
The student looks confused. "But he's so confident. He speaks with such certainty."
"Confidence is not understanding," Silman says. "Let me tell you what happened three months ago. Eldar told several members of our club that Kasparov always loses to the Fried Liver Attack when the moon is a waning gibbous and it's raining in Moscow. You can imagine the confusion. Some of us laughed. Others wrote it down solemnly in their notebooks. When we asked him to explain—was this some psychological insight? Some preparation pattern?—he simply insisted the statement was correct."
"If Eldar said it, it is so," says the gnome, not looking up from his board.
Tal continues, his voice still gentle, "But you see, we checked. Kasparov has never lost to the Fried Liver. So either Eldar was simply wrong, or he was speaking nonsense, or his words means something different in fairy language, or—and this is what troubles me — he cannot distinguish between his thoughts and reality. We have no way to tell. His voice sounds exactly the same whether he's revealing deep truth or speaking complete gibberish."
The gnome's expression doesn't change. "Then you misunderstood my meaning. Or checked incorrectly. The analysis is favorable. Eldar always wins"
Silman speaks quietly. "Or you were just wrong. But here's the problem—we can't see inside your reasoning. When you say something about chess, we can't trace how you arrived at that conclusion. We can only test whether the moves work in actual games. And even then, if they fail, you'll say we misunderstood, or the position was different, or we misplayed. There's no way into your mind. Which means we cannot learn how you think."
The student's face shows dawning worry. "Then when Eldar speaks, we have no way to know if he's telling the truth?"
"Exactly," says Tal. "He might be revealing the deepest secrets of chess. Or he might be saying that knights move diagonally during leap years. His confidence is identical. His certainty is the same. We'd need some way to see into his reasoning—to understand how he reaches his conclusions—but he gives us none. Just pronouncements from behind an impenetrable wall. His mind is a locked room."
The young student asks, "But if we can't penetrate Eldar's reasoning, how do we learn anything? How do we know which teachers to trust?"
Silman's answer is immediate, "You trust teachers who open their minds to you. When Dvoretsky tells me 'rooks belong on open files,' I can follow his reasoning. He shows me the mechanism—the rook controls more squares, exerts pressure down the file. His thinking is transparent. I can trace the path from principle to application. And when I find positions where it doesn't work, I can figure out what's different, because I understand the underlying logic. But if a teacher's mind is sealed, if their reasoning is opaque, then you cannot learn how they think. You can only memorize what they said. And that's not understanding. That's just collecting pronouncements you don't comprehend."
"But what if Eldar's reasoning is actually profound? What if we're just too weak to understand it?"
"Then he's still useless as a teacher," Tal says, not unkindly. "If his reasoning is so advanced that we cannot penetrate it, cannot trace it, cannot follow the path of his thoughts, then we cannot learn from it. We can only memorize his specific pronouncements and hope. Teaching requires opening your mind to your students. If you keep it sealed—whether from arrogance or because it's genuinely beyond their comprehension—you cannot teach. You can only mystify."
Eldar has finished examining the position. "White plays Ng5," he announces flatly. "After Black's Ke8, White continues Qh5. The position is winning."
"Why Ng5?" asks the older student. "What makes this the right move? What's it accomplishing? Let us see your reasoning."
"It is correct."
"But how is it correct? Open your mind to us. Show us how you arrived at that conclusion."
The gnome looks at the student. His gaze is empty of everything except... something. Calculation? Fairy glamour? Randomness? There is no way to tell. "The position is favorable. That is sufficient."
"Sufficient for what?" the student presses. "Sufficient for us to trust you? How? We can't see inside your reasoning. Your mind is closed to us. For all we know, you're just guessing. Or lying. Or confused. Your confidence tells us nothing about what's happening behind those eyes."
Eldar returns to his board without responding.
Tal speaks quietly. "Do you see, students? Eldar has locked himself—or locked us out—behind walls we cannot penetrate. He will not open his mind. His reasoning remains opaque. This makes him fundamentally unreliable as a teacher, regardless of how many games he wins. Because reliable teaching requires transparency. It requires opening your thoughts so others can trace them, understand them, build upon them."
"When I sit down to play a game," Silman says, "I make decisions based on principles I can articulate. Imbalances, pawn structures, piece activity. These principles connect—they form a coherent system where understanding one helps you understand the others. My reasoning is open. Other strong players can see inside my thinking, can point out where I went wrong, can help me refine my understanding. That's how I improve—by keeping my mind open, by making my reasoning visible and connected. But Eldar? His mind is sealed. Just isolated pronouncements from behind an impenetrable wall. He might have the most brilliant chess mind in the garden. He might be a complete fraud. We have no way to tell, because we cannot see inside."
"Eldar will probably defeat us today," Tal concludes, "and tomorrow, and perhaps forever. But we cannot learn from him, because learning requires entering another's mind, tracing their thoughts, understanding their reasoning. When a teacher seals their mind, when their reasoning cannot be penetrated, they become fundamentally unreliable—not necessarily wrong, but unable to transmit understanding. And that is not a teacher. That is a mystery we can admire but never comprehend."
The older student bows slightly. "Then I choose to learn from those who open their minds, even if they can't beat Eldar."
But the young student still watches Eldar, fascinated. "Yet he wins every game he plays..."
Note the young student's eyes. In them, you can see a dangerous temptation. The gnome's power is undeniable. He has never lost. And the human path—learning from those who open their reasoning, who admit when they're wrong, who let you trace their thoughts—seems so much slower, so much less certain. Much easier to memorize Eldar's pronouncements and speak with his mysterious authority. Much easier to seal your own mind and become an oracle than to keep it open and become a thinker. The student doesn't know it yet, but he's about to make a choice. And in the Garden between the spheres, choices have consequences.
Time passes. The young student studies with Eldar, memorizing his pronouncements, learning to speak in the same cryptic way. "I calculate what I calculate." "The position is as I say it is." "You failed to understand." He begins making confident declarations about positions, and some students are awed by his mysterious certainty.
"He speaks like Master Eldar!" they say. "He must possess deep knowledge!"
But the older student, watching, sees the truth: the young one has become another Mr. Metalhead, his mind deliberately opaque, his reasoning intentionally sealed. He sounds profound but might be concealing emptiness. No one can tell, including himself.
One morning the young student approaches Tal. His face is troubled.
"Master, I've studied with Eldar for months. I've memorized his pronouncements, learned to speak with his certainty. But yesterday a strong player challenged one of my claims. He asked me to explain my reasoning, to open my thoughts so he could follow them. I... I couldn't. I realized I had no reasoning to show. I'd just been repeating things Eldar told me, pronouncements whose logic I'd never penetrated. I'd sealed my own mind, thinking that made me wise. But there was nothing inside. Just disconnected pronouncements I didn't understand."
"Yes," Tal says gently, and there's deep compassion in his voice. "You learned that opacity can look like profundity. And now you're trapped in the same prison he is: speaking confidently while understanding nothing, teaching nothing because your mind is as closed as his."
"What should I do?"
"Begin again. Open your mind. Learn from teachers whose ideas you can follow. It will be slower. It will require humility. But it's the only path to genuine understanding — understanding that lives in an open mind, that connects across ideas, that can be shared and built upon."
The young student is quiet for a long time.
Nearby, Eldar continues his mysterious work, winning every game, teaching nothing, locked forever behind walls that might hide profound wisdom or might hide nothing at all. No one can tell. No one will ever know.
And the masters continue their study, losing to Eldar daily yet growing in wisdom, because they have learned something more valuable than impenetrable mystery: they have learned to keep their minds open, to value transparent reasoning over opaque pronouncement, to build understanding that can be shared.
Eldar will win forever. The masters will lose daily. But they'll grow wiser from their losses, because their minds are open—their reasoning can be traced, their thoughts can be followed, their understanding can be examined and refined. In a garden between the spheres, this makes them more reliable—and thus better teachers—than any mysterious oracle, no matter how powerful. A lesson worth remembering, whether you're studying chess or navigating any domain where expertise hides behind impenetrable walls... including the far stranger landscapes of the Twilight Zone.
THE END