Pale Fire: Illustrated Sports Illustrated Sports Pale Fire Journal | Page 18

zel & Kinbote beating Team Pairs 21:15, 18:21, and 22:20 leaving no room for
error and a close finish and Team Madman beating Team Lifetime 21:18, 23:21.
The strange match up of the first game shows a big team, Pairs, lose to a duo,
H&K, that used to be a part of the team but separated because they could be
stronger alone. Pairs lost due to the fact that many smaller duos within the team
got crossed up and confused with each other, so they couldn’t play their strong-
est. Originally Disa and Sylvia stepped up to play and was interrupted by Fleur
de Flyer, with Disa being a princess soon be a queen, Fleur a head nurse (211)
and Sylvia being the main trustee of Wordsmith University (248) these three
seemed like a good pair for play but didn’t bond well enough together to win
and were constantly fighting on who matched with who better because Fleur
sounds a lot like flower and Disa is a type of orchid (213) but at the same time
Sylvia and Fleur had a “vagueness of manner” in common (248). Kinbote and
Shade also stepped up to the match, with Gradus as their substitute, sharing a
couple of similarities with each other making them a good team. Some of these
include having the same birthday, their love for poetry, but Kinbote also shares a
meat-eating problem with Gradus in that Kinbote is a vegetarian and Gradus
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