(Part one is here.) Coming this May in 8 octaves, 64 chapters and on 888 pages, Louis Armand’s The Combinations is a “work of attempted fiction” that combines the beauty & intellectual exertion that is chess, with the panorama of futility & chaos that is Prague (a.k.a. “Golem City”), across the 20th-century and before/after. MOVE 3: OPENING GAMBIT (SKLAV DEFENSE). A bundle of documents from the Prof’s inheritance shows up at Němec’s doorstep, strongly resembling the famed Voynich Manuscript, one of the great conundrums of recorded time, composed by an unknown author, in an unknown language. Despite the various attentions of “occultists, amateur riddlers, pseudoscientists & crackpots of every stripe from the four corners of the globe, each obsessed with