I was surprised not to find the word Zugswanged in my copy of Langenscheidt’s Standard German Dictionary, which is over 1,200 pages long and pretty comprehensive. But it’s one of those words whose meaning is perfectly obvious. Officially, it is a chess term for a position in which a player is stuck in a cramped, defensive position and has to make a move, knowing that every option is a bad one.
No doubt the player in question is left with a feeling which corresponds pretty well to my personal interpretation of the word: ‘wanged by a Zug’ or clobbered by a train!
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