# Timur Gareyev - blindfold chess champion: answers and explanations

Cambridge IELTS 17, Test 4, Reading Passage 3

Source: Passage, questions and answer key from Cambridge IELTS 17, Test 4, Reading Passage 3. © Cambridge University Press & Assessment. Used for educational practice. Explanations and evidence notes are written by Testmigo.

## Answer key

| Q | Answer | Proof |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 27 | D | But displays of the feat go back centuries. |
| 28 | E | Not only must the positions of each piece on every board be memorised |
| 29 | F | We didn't find anything other than playing chess that he seems to be supremely gifted at. |
| 30 | B | the thing that's so remarkable about Timur and a few other individuals is the number of games they can keep active at once |
| 31 | H | I don't worry too much about the winning percentage |
| 32 | E | But the ends of games are taxing too, as exhaustion sets in. |
| 33 | FALSE | While his challengers will play the games as normal, Gareyev himself will be blindfolded. |
| 34 | NOT GIVEN | he gets his kicks from the adventure sport of BASE jumping |
| 35 | NOT GIVEN | researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) called him in for tests |
| 36 | TRUE | The ability to play a game of chess with your eyes closed is not a far reach for most accomplished players ... Accomplished players can develop the skill of playing blind even without realising it. |
| 37 | memory | The scientists first had Gareyev perform some standard memory tests. |
| 38 | numbers | One classic test measures how many numbers a person can repeat |
| 39 | communication | the scans found much greater than average communication between parts of Gareyev's brain that make up what is called the frontoparietal control network. |
| 40 | visual | The scans also suggest that Gareyev's visual network is more highly connected to other brain parts than usual. |

## Why these answers are right

**27. D.** Paragraph D says displays of blindfold chess "go back centuries", then mentions the first recorded game in 13th-century Florence and Miguel Najdorf's 45 games in 1947. These are earlier examples of blindfold chess, so the answer is D.

**28. E.** Paragraph E explains what playing blind requires: running moves through the mind, memorizing every piece on every board, recalling and updating positions, then storing them again before moving on. That step-by-step description outlines what blindfold chess involves, so the answer is E.

**29. F.** After standard memory tests, Rissman says Gareyev "was not exceptional" and "We didn't find anything other than playing chess that he seems to be supremely gifted at." That is a claim that his special ability is limited to chess, so the answer is F.

The why and the trap for questions 30 onwards are free with an account on the [answers page](https://testmigo.com/ielts/reading/timur-gareyev-blindfold-chess-champion/answers).

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