Bare cheek: What was that?

Dear Mike,
Sadly, my elder brother died earlier this year. He was 69 years old. We had been somewhat estranged for many years, so I was surprised when he left me something in his will.

It is a beautifully finished, lacquered wooden case, about 14” long, 7” wide and 3” high. The top and bottom are inlaid with a chequered pattern, which, when the case is fully open, makes a board of 64 squares – half of them dark wood, half light. So this is a board game of some sort.

Inside the case are 32 elaborately carved pieces, again half of them dark wood, half light. These pieces are redolent of a medieval court, with some resembling castles, some horses, and others topped with crowns.

I dimly recall that my brother was, as a youth, very keen on this game, and tried to interest me in it – to no avail. He would explain to me how those who mastered it were revered for their subtle intellect and penetrating insights into their opponents’ psychological make-up, but it all went over my head. Nonetheless, I was very fond of my big brother in those more innocent times, and I feel that his bequest was an attempt to “reach out”, as current parlance has it, beyond our adult differences to our mutual childhood affection.

I should like to thank his widow for this kind gift, but, for the life of me, cannot recall the name of the game in question. Please can you help?
Yours,
Robert Fisher,
Hove

Dear Robert,
You’d clearly reached an ‘impasse’. Never fear – you will consider me your ‘knight’ in shining armour, and your best ‘mate’ when I reveal that the game you describe is, of course, none other than ‘I Vant To Bite Your Finger’, from Hasbro.
Keep those queries coming in!

Lots of love,
Mike. X

HOVE FACTUALLY

Yet more fantastic facts you didn’t know about fabulous Hove:

1 The famous Britons pictured on the back of Hove banknotes are different from those in the rest of England, with Simon Cadell gracing the Hove five pound note, Clive Sinclair appearing on the ten pound note, Jack Smethurst being pictured on the twenty pound note, and the image of Lennie Peters appearing on the fifty pound note.

2 All his life, Edward Lear struggled with the task of finding amusing second and fifth lines to rhyme with “there once was a young man from Hove”, but the limerick remained unfinished at the time of his death.

3 Seventeen of Great Britain’s twenty most notorious haunted houses are on Portland Road.

4 An extremely rare and specific form of the aurora borealis can be seen in the Brunswick Town area of Hove, on certain winter nights between December and February. It takes the form of large, vivid green and purplletters many hundreds of feet high which spell out the word “b****cks”.

5 Hove’s oxygen-rich air means an intense, heroin-like high is experienced by its inhabitants 24 hours a day.

Edward De Bonehead’s

LATERAL THINKING PUZZLES
NO. 43:
THE ANNIVERSARY DINNER

It is a couple’s 30th wedding anniversary and they decide to go out for a meal at a restaurant. The man orders steak and the woman orders trout, but the waiter brings tagliatelle instead. Rather than complaining, they begin to eat, but upon tasting the first mouthful the woman immediately sues the man for divorce. Why?

SOLUTION TO LAST WEEK’S PROBLEM:

The car is on fire.