As usual some really great clues.
Special mention to Buddy @5, Jono @6, Mattrom’s topical one at 18, and the brevity of fieryjack@24, Paul’s slight tweak at 10 and the brevity of 11 were brill. Aristophanes @13 made me laugh out loud, and Ginge @33 is a good one.
It was a toss-up between:
Becker's content with match fixing to get the win (9) paulhabershon@37
It's game over for goalkeeper Petr and his partner I hear. (9), granama1@32
In the end I went for granama1@32. Big congratulations.
Apologies if I didn’t select you.
Being new to this forum I would like to say how much I am enjoying the creativity, and the friendliness of the site. Thank you.
The last three letters of my forum name, tal, were selected because of my admiration for a former Russian world chess champion Mikhail Tal. My interest in chess is why I selected the word CHECKMATE.
In view of this Granama1’s prize is the link below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL-uWmw4YMA
Enjoy the whirlwind play of the brilliant Magnus Carlsen, the young Norwegian world chess champ. The video is about 90 seconds.