Valerio Lanfranco Meletti

Zugzwang Valerio Lanfranco Meletti

A Professor of Semantics is kidnapped and held prisoner by a Villain who has also taken fifteen hostages. In order to spare the hostages' lives the Villain asks the Professor: a. the exact definition of fourteen unused and weird English words; b. to compose a iambic pentameter based on each of the given words. Every Professor's mistake leads to the death of one of the hostages. The duel will guide the characters and the readers on an imaginary trip through Ancient Greece, the Romans, psychology, chess, the Nuremberg Code. . . While the iambic pentameters compose a (proper?) sonnet line after line, we see the "power" shifting from the Villain to the Professor, forth and back, until the tragic end of the duel. The duel has no winners, as everyone dies.