Have never been any sort of player myself, tho have known the moves from very early age. But I think there is a correlation between performance in such games as chess & bridge, & linguistic & mathematical ability. I have a 1st-cousin who is Emeritus Professor of Chinese at the Australian National University, whose his first discipline at London Univ was maths, but learnt Japanese during Far Eastern service as officer in REME & went on postwar to win ½-blues in both these games in post-grad time studying for M.Litt in Medieval Chinese at Cambridge; then went on to doctorate at Sorbonne. He is now in his 90s but still keeping up intellectual interests.

≈M≈