OK. Chess joke: I was playing chess with my friend and he said, “Let’s make this interesting.” So we stopped playing chess. Would Magnus Carlsen laugh at that one? At 31, the five-time world champion from Norway has announced that he won’t take part in next year’s championship match, though…

When the running boom hit in the early Seventies and I joined that program already in progress, I did what any greenhorn follower of a trend would do. I sought out the brand of running shoes that a real runner, Olympic marathon champion Frank Shorter, was wearing then. The shoes…

Here come the Judge. Time to break out that old catchphrase — grammatically iffy — that was all the rage in the Sixties, popularized by the TV sketch comedy “Laugh-In.” …

(This appeared in Newsday’s Act2 section) I’m only going to say this one time. June 3 was National Repeat Day. In more ways than one, it’s a redundancy. We already have Groundhog Day in February — a metaphor for replication. And the last thing we need is an occasion to…

Once the Queen is dead, might Australians dispense with moving right to “Long live the King”? Their country is 9,500 miles from their head of state. And it is not unkind to consider that Elizabeth II — at 96 and celebrating 70 years on the throne — before long will…

The cliché is that athletic failure at an early age is a primary inspiration to become a sportswriter. Which didn’t apply to Kenny Moore, who died last month at 78. Neither did the generalization that elite physical performance gifts do not translate into producing compelling narration of such. Moore was…

The End. This is an argument that a primary highlight to every hockey playoff series doesn’t happen until it’s over: The traditional handshake line between the victor and the vanquished. The sport’s handshake rite — the date and specifics of its origin are unknown — is especially appealing because it…

This is about thoroughbred racing. So play your hunches. Would the sport be better off — for the horses’ health, for wider popularity, for more compelling matchups — if the Triple Crown series altered its schedule to provide more time between races? …

Regarding the Western nations’ announcement of sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s close associates, should it be a surprise they include a woman, 32 years his junior, long identified as his mistress? …