The boy’s name was Prashant, and he was tall, dark-skinned, broad-shouldered, brilliant. He impressed the other boys in his dorm at the elite American university by playing chess with them blindfolded, sometimes undertaking three or four games simultaneously. The hardest thing was that often, when they described their moves to him, he’d know the moves were wrong because they didn’t quite know the names of the rows and columns on the board. So, he’d need to correct their game and then make his own move. They found this very impressive, but it was actually pretty simple, if you’d practiced. It wasn’t real chess, only a parlor trick.