Comins Mansfield (14 June 1896 – 27 March 1984) was a

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

problem

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

. He gained the title International Grandmaster for chess compositions in 1972 and 94.33 points in the

FIDE Album The FIDE Albums are publications of the world chess governing body, FIDE, via the Permanent Commission of the FIDE for Chess Compositions (PCCC), containing the best chess problems and studies of a certain period (usually three years in length). ...

.FIDE-Album points
/ref> Mansfield was born in the village of

Witheridge Witheridge is a village and civil parish in the North Devon district of Devon, England. In 2001 the population of the parish was 1162, reducing slightly to 1,158 at the 2011 Census. An electoral ward with the same name exists. The population ...

, near Tiverton in

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...

, England, the son of Herbert John Mansfield, who had long played

correspondence chess Correspondence chess is chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, traditionally through the postal system. Today it is usually played through a correspondence chess server, a public internet chess forum, or email. Less common ...

for Devon. He attended

Blundell's School Blundell's School is a co-educational day and boarding independent school in the English public school tradition, located in Tiverton, Devon. It was founded in 1604 under the will of Peter Blundell, one of the richest men in England at the tim ...

in Tiverton and there began to take an interest in the game. He was inspired by a 1910 article in the ''British Chess Magazine'' that contained chess problems, and soon won first prize for a

two-mover A chess problem, also called a chess composition, is a puzzle set by the composer using chess pieces on a chess board, which presents the solver with a particular task. For instance, a position may be given with the instruction that White is to ...

published in a Plymouth newspaper. After leaving school, he joined the tobacco company W. D. & H. O. Wills, which remained his employer for 45 years, firstly in Bristol and later in Glasgow. While still in Bristol, he won the Gloucestershire county chess championship every year from 1927 to 1934. In 1936,

Alain C. White Alain C. White (March 3, 1880 to April 12, 1951) was an American conservationist and chess problem composer in the first half of the 20th century. He played a pivotal role in Connecticut land preservation, and founded the journal ''The Good Compa ...

published ''A Genius of the Two-Mover'', which included 100 of the 300-or-so problems that Mansfield had composed over the past 20 years; and, in 1944, White also published Mansfield's ''Adventures in Composition – The Art of the Two Move Chess Problem'' in a limited edition. This book was re-published in the UK in 1948. When Mansfield retired from Wills in around 1960, he moved to

Paignton Paignton ( ) is a seaside town on the coast of Tor Bay in Devon, England. Together with Torquay and Brixham it forms the borough of Torbay which was created in 1998. The Torbay area is a holiday destination known as the English Riviera. Paignt ...

, Devon. He became

FIDE The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( Fédération Internationale des Échecs), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national c ...

's first Master for Chess Composition in 1959, becoming President of FIDE's Problem Commission in 1963. The following year he took over as the ''Sunday Telegraph'''s chess columnist and retained that post until 1978. He was made International Grandmaster FIDE in 1972 and was awarded the

MBE Mbe may refer to: * Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo * Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria * Mbe language, a language of Nigeria * Mbe' language, language of Cameroon * ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language Molal ...

for his services to chess in 1976.

References

1896 births 1984 deaths People educated at Blundell's School Chess composers Grandmasters for chess composition Members of the Order of the British Empire 20th-century chess players {{England-chess-bio-stub