Culture Diary: The Queen’s Gambit

User:Nina Silaeva, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

I have never played Chess in my life. The few times anyone has tried to explain the rules to me, my eyes glaze over and my brain checks out. I have a mental block when it comes to strategy games—I just don’t have the patience for them. They seem boring and frustrating to me.

So when my friend Karen suggested I watch The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, I was skeptical. But I trust her, and I’d seen mentions of…