Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

I have a new friend named Mephisto. No, it’s not a dog or a cat. It’s not even alive, unless you think computers have lives of their own. Mephisto is a computerized chess game.

It’s better than playing chess on one of those Internet websites, because there is a way to take back a move. This might seem like cheating, but I find it’s helpful in the learning process. When Mephisto’s bishop takes my queen because I wasn’t watching where I moved her, it could signal the start of the end of the game. So I hit the “Take Back” button and that play is reversed.

I don’t hit “Take Back” every time Mephisto captures one of my pieces; we’d never finish a game. At the same time, I moved my queen without thinking it through, and I wanted to see what would happen if I moved something else instead.

My Uncle Dick said recently that chess is lost by the person who makes the most mistakes. I just don’t want to make obvious ones. And, for the record, Mephisto has won more times than I have.