Daily Dialogue — October 20, 2017

PAULINE: Peter, did you ever stop and ask yourself how many squares are on a chess board?
BISHTON: 64. It’s an 8 by 8 grid.
PAULINE: Well… but don’t you see how limited that is?
BISHTON: No, it’s actually very complex once you start to think about it as a programming problem. Just the number of possible games explodes exponentially with each move, it’s close to 10 to the 120th power. And to try and compute all those games might take even longer than humanity would be around to do so.

— Computer Chess (2013), written by Andrew Bujalski

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Computer. Today’s suggestion by Gisela Wehrl.

Trivia: Writer-director Andrew Bajalski found a book about chess trivia, he found at a mobile book fair for $2. There was a section on computer chess, and one of the questions was, Where was the first American computer chess tournament held? “Just the fact that such a thing existed sparked something in my mind”, Bajalski told in a Slate interview.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Gisela: “The dialogue is funny, because the two characters talk about two totally different themes. I love the funny and absurd style of this movie.