{"id":44696,"date":"2026-06-01T08:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T13:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=44696"},"modified":"2026-06-01T08:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T13:06:15","slug":"word-of-the-day-1120","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2026\/06\/01\/word-of-the-day-1120\/","title":{"rendered":"Word Of The Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zugzwang<\/em>:<\/p>\n

In Chess, Zugzwang is a position in which for the player who\u2019s move it is, any move they make would make the position worse. The player that has to move would be better off not making a move at all. But of course in the game of Chess, there is not option to pass or skip your turn to move. You are forced to move a piece. [The Chess Journal<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In research I noted there are similar definitions on a more generic basis. Noted in “As Ukraine\u2019s fortunes improve, it\u2019s zugzwang time for Putin<\/em><\/a>,” George F. Will, WaPo<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n

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A former senior Russian government official,\u00a0writing anonymously<\/a>\u00a0for the Economist, says the war Russia started has reached a situation known in chess as \u201czugzwang,\u201d when every move worsens the position. By the end of this year, two current unknowns might be known: how Putin might lash out in response to the pain of Ukraine\u2019s military revival. And how Trump might lash out in response to the painful (to him) fact that, refuting his clairvoyance, Ukraine holds good and improving cards.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zugzwang: In Chess, Zugzwang is a position in which for the player who\u2019s move it is, any move they make would make the position worse. The player that has to move would be better off not making a move at all. But of course in the game of Chess, there \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44697,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44696\/revisions\/44697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}