# Poe's draughts argument changes in the retelling

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH02.P005](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH02.P005/#char=1442,1515): "he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a poem"

The identifiable source is the opening of Poe's *The Murders in the Rue Morgue*, first published in *Graham's Magazine*, April 1841; the inspected Poe Society transcription reproduces that first printing, pp. 166–167. Poe's narrator does rank draughts above chess as an exercise of analytical power. But the stated reason is that chess's varied moves reward sustained attention and can make complexity look like profundity; the simpler moves of draughts leave more room for penetrating the opponent's intentions. Knights, castles, and their poetic associations are Chesterton's explanation, not the narrator's. Nor does the story separate analysis cleanly from imagination: it explicitly describes the genuinely imaginative as profoundly analytical. Chesterton therefore borrows an actual preference but changes its rationale to serve his opposition between imaginative expansion and exhaustive reasoning. The fictional narrator's argument also does not establish Poe's personal dislike of playing chess.

## Sources

- [Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Graham's Magazine, April 1841](https://www.eapoe.org/works/tales/morgueb.htm), pp. 166–167, opening discussion of chess and draughts, through 'profoundly analytic'

Revision 1 · 2026-11-07 · https://glosses.org/a/a_geq7e7tj/