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The Subtle Finesse of The Queen’s Gambit As a Novel vs. a Series Genna Rivieccio
While the runaway Netflix hit that has been Scott Frank and Allan Scott’s The Queen’s Gambit has remained more faithful than most adaptations to the original it’s based on, it bears noting a number of glaring differences that make Walter Tevis’ book stand out for its nuances. Appropriate, considering that to be truly great at chess, one must recognize that it’s all about the nuances. Seeing the moves and adjustments that only the most skilled and adept can. Alas, if only one could say that about other facets of life—for it’s evident that we’ve all become complacent with crude, slapdash approaches to most everything, the arts included. Upon the book’s release in 1983, reviewer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (one supposes we must mention he wrote for The New York Times to give his opinion Legitimacy with a capital “L”) touted, “Forget just for a moment that Walter Tevis’ The Queen’s Gambit is a novel about the game of chess—the best one that I know of to be written since Nabokov’s Defense. Consider it as a psychological thriller, a contest pitting human rationality against the self’s unconscious urge to wipe out thought.” If this sounds like a slightly more cerebral and erudite version of what you watched on Netflix, you would not be wrong. For the devil is in the details, and since that’s the case, Tevis’ rendering of our heroine, Elizabeth “Beth” Harmon (played by Anya Taylor-Joy in the show) comes across as slightly more complex, especially when pitted against the show’s heavy-handed addition of certain backstories— namely that of her parents. From the very first paragraph, one of the biggest discrepancies is established: Beth’s mother dies in a car accident while her daughter is at home, as opposed to Beth being potential collateral damage in her mother’s need to end it all a.s.a.p. Because of this latter plot detail switch in the show, greater emphasis is placed on where Beth’s self-destructive tendencies—in a direct collision with her brilliance—stem from. Conversely, in the book, her mother’s death is never flashed back to in terms of highlighting her progenitor’s depressive, mad genius
predilections. And any vague flashbacks aren’t nearly as “deliberately pertinent” as what’s put in the show (e.g. in the book, Beth’s mother teaches her the meaning of the word cunt by instructing, “Wipe yourself… Be sure to wipe your Tevis wastes no time in getting his reader situated in the orphanage (called Methuen) setting with Beth. Except Jolene isn’t exactly the rough exterior’d-butwith-a-heart-of-gold presence she’s made out to be in Netflix’s version. reached a hand under the sheet and laid it gently on Beth’s belly. Beth was on her back. The hand stayed there, and Beth’s body remained stiff. ‘Don’t be so uptight,’ Jolene whispered. ‘I ain’t gonna hurt nothing.’ She giggled softly… ‘Just
cunt”).The father element also gets peppered in by Frank, who wrote all seven episodes, opting to lend Beth’s childhood further palpable tragedian flair by emphasizing that her mother drove her father away to the point where he finally decided he’d prefer to simply abandon both of them altogether. In the book the father is non-present, and fuzzier in Beth’s memory when mentioned perfunctorily one time to Jolene. No, no. Here instead, it doesn’t take her long to molest Beth by putting her hand down her vag and telling Beth to do the same. As Beth experiences it, “Sometime in the middle of the night she was awakened. Someone was sitting on the edge of her bed. She stiffened. ‘Take it easy,’ Jolene whispered. ‘It’s only me.’ Beth said nothing, just lay there and waited. ‘Thought you might like trying something fun,’ Jolene said. She relax. I’m just going to rub a little. It’ll feel good, if you let it.’” This horrifying moment of child molestation feels, in many ways, as abusive and exploitative as if it were coming from a male pedophile (even though the gender shouldn’t need to be specified when one says “pedophile”). The one-time instance also seems like some kind of mirror of Beth’s entire life, where people tell her to enjoy things she has no 69.
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 enjoyment of. The only source of pleasure for her being chess, where there are rules, order—the situation can be controlled. There in the bed of the orphanage that night, it was just another instance of Beth having absolutely no control over anything that happened to her. Thus, the irony of her gravitating to substances that allow her to numb herself and check out mentally are almost in direct contrast to the entire reason why she is so ardent about chess. Lives and breathes it—thinks only about it at all hours of the day. Plus, it’s just another way not to examine too closely all the horrendous events that have befallen her. A way not to address what should feel like crippling loneliness. But no one is lonely enough to want to be fingered by what amounts to a stranger (no matter what Jolene tries to pull with her “It’s just me” bullshit).
The cringeworthy nature of the entire scene persists as Jolene’s “hand was moving downward. Beth shook her head. ‘Don’t…” she whispered. ‘Hush now,’ Jolene said. Her hand moved down farther, and one finger began to rub up and down. It did not hurt, but something in Beth resisted it.” Jolene, not the type to give anything without getting something in return, ups the ante on the entire violating affair as she “squirmed a little closer to Beth and took Beth’s free hand with her free one, pulling it toward her. ‘You touch me, too,’ she said. Beth let her hand go limp. Jolene guided it up under her nightgown until the fingers grazed a place that felt warm and damp. ‘Come on now, press a little,’ Jolene whispered.
The intensity in the whispering voice was frightening. Beth did as she was told and pressed harder.” Here, too, the metaphor of
Beth’s existence is summed up with simply doing whatever she needed to in order to move through a situation and get to a better (or at least less disgusting) one. In this scenario, it’s as though 70.
Beth has encountered an opponent she knows she can never defeat. Jolene is the first version of Borgov in this regard—except Beth never got the fair advantage of at least being able to contend with her molester on a board. Jolene’s fiendishness for orgasm escalates with the urging, “‘Come on, baby, move it up and down. Like this.’ She started moving her finger on Beth. It was terrifying. Beth rubbed Jolene a few times, trying hard, concentrating on just doing it… Then Jolene’s face was against hers and her arm around Beth’s chest. ‘Faster,’ Jolene whispered. ‘Faster.’ ‘No,’ Beth said aloud, terrified. ‘No, I don’t want to.’” At last, Beth advocates for herself with enough firmness to put a stop to the assault. Even though, not a moment later, one of the “orderlies,” if you will, opens the door to do a spot check (or maybe she heard all of Jolene’s avid grunting). Regardless, Beth’s empowerment at this moment is in direct correlation to her quick study of chess around the same period as Jolene’s “proposition,” giving her the confidence she gets from nothing and no one else in her life. The attraction to the board happens the same way in both narratives, with Beth catching sight of Mr. Shaibel perched on his stool in front of a table in the basement illuminated only by a bare bulb. As Beth is drawn to the mysterious game, Shaibel warns her, “‘You should be upstairs with the others.’ She looked at him levelly; something about this man and the steadiness with which he played his mysterious game helped her to hold tightly to what she wanted. ‘I don’t want to be with the others. I want to know what game you’re playing.’” Having never felt such an automatic response to anything as she did to that board, Beth is perhaps startled that her wheel of emotions is capable of more after she’s adopted by the Wheatleys and ends up encountering the movie star-like Townes after entering the Kentucky State Championship. This, of course, amid Mr. Wheatley’s patent abandonment of Mrs. Wheatley. Another father figure bites the dust. At least now she has a boy she’s interested in, so who cares about a Daddy? With regard to this devirginizing chess tournament (in terms of Beth competing “professionally” for the first time), her means for coming across the money to do so is quite different than what happens in the show, and is indicative of her character: willing to do whatever it takes. That is, whatever it takes to participate in chess and, above all, win. While, in the show, Beth writes to Mr. Shaibel to ask for the five dollars—promising to repay him ten when she wins—in the book, he gives Beth the five dollars after she already stole two five dollar bills from the school’s resident popular girl, Margaret. Specifically from her bag while she’s showering in the locker room. Beth plots out the heist all too methodically, in a panic about not having enough to compete in the tournament. When she gets the extra five dollars in the mail (in the form of one-dollar bills), she uses four of them to refill Mrs. Wheatley’s prescription bottle... for herself. Beth, indeed, did acquire quite a taste for the green “gems” modeled after Librium, but called Xanzolam in the show. Whatever the fictional or real name, Beth is quick to note the tranquility her daily benzodiazepine intake gives her—though not as quick to give it up. That’s why she’s willing to take the gamble (just as she does when she plays high-stakes games of chess) on a rogue move: stealing her fix from the jar full of pills still proudly displayed behind the counter. In the show, as in the book, the Saturday afternoon movie being played when it happens is The Robe, starring Richard Burton. And while Beth’s initially sly and successful approach to the jar occurs in much
the same way, it is the “right after” that clashes with the limited series’ version of events. For the purposes of pacing, Frank’s account ends on a cliffhanger at the end of episode one, “Openings.” When it picks up again with “Exchanges,” Beth and Jolene are talking about the incident in the past tense, with Beth’s punishment of not being allowed to play chess anymore already doled out. When she sees Mr. Shaibel screwing in a lightbulb in the hallway, she walks toward him with an aura of defeat, explaining, “They won’t let me play anymore. I’m being punished. Can you help me? Please? I wish I could play with you more.” Shaibel, naturally, says nothing, only casts her a potentially woeful look. Conversely, the book tells of the aftermath of Beth’s pill “gambit” with the description, “Fergusson rode with her in the brown staff car and carried her into the hospital to the little room where the lights were bright and they made her swallow a gray rubber tube. It was easy. Nothing mattered. She could still see the green mound of pills in the jar… She fell asleep and woke only for a moment when someone pushed a hypodermic needle in her arm.” Fergusson would drive her back to Methuen the same night. After twelve hours of sleep, the next morning, Beth is summoned to Mrs. Deardorff’s office. Kept waiting for an hour, she is given the ultimate blow as though it is a chess move, saved as a checkmate for Deardorff’s endgame: “No more chess.” That’s what she tells Beth to conclude the meeting. Along with the punishment of being expected to write a summary of each Sunday’s chapel talk—the time Beth once specifically used for going down to the basement to play. Beth’s aloofness and general mistrust can be chalked up to the fact that, as Tevis wrote, “...she had never been touched very much by older people, except for punishment.” Here, that punishment didn’t even need to be associated with touch in order for it to have a profound effect on Beth. It isn’t until she is adopted by the Wheatleys that she can at last get back into it without fear of abusive reprisal. It’s noteworthy in both instances of the show and book that, as Beth is about to win the state championship, her goddamn “womanhood” gets in the way. Her accomplishment is overshadowed by, once again, being a girl. Yet it feels all too poetic that this is the same day she develops her first real crush on Townes— fitting, as he is someone romantically unattainable and Beth doesn’t actually want to get that close to anyone. That’s why, in the book, there is no female player who happens upon Beth in the stall to kindly offer her a pad. No, that’s the show’s type of coddling. In Tevis’ scene, Beth simply does what Jolene taught her to and creates a makeshift pad by shoving some toilet paper up her vag (an act “Show Beth” does anyway after she’s given the official materials and decides to throw them in the trash). One aspect the show is committed to keeping completely intact is the death of Mrs. Wheatley in Mexico City, with Beth’s phone call dialogue to Mr. Wheatley in Colorado being essentially verbatim. When she returns to Kentucky to bury the body, the “affair” that ensues with Beltik has a more attenuated tone. Because of this, Beltik’s eventual departure isn’t nearly as dramatic, and much of the dialogue given to him is extracted from the narration of this section, put as words into Show Beltik’s mouth. So it is that it’s another instance of the book’s details being mélangé to suit the show’s “needs.” At least when it comes to Beltik. He does not make a big, dramatic production about leaving, nor does he compare her to Paul Morphy, “the pride and sorrow of chess.” Their cutoff is clinical, terse. Beltik tells her he’s decided she’s learned all she can from him and that he’s moving to the apartment near the university. All Beth says is, “Okay,” and that’s that. No emotional speeches or teary departures. Beth goes about the business of getting drunk now that old buzzkill Beltik is gone. This distinction puts a finer point on Beth’s cold nature. Cold by necessity. She’s spent her whole life “training alone,” as it is said in the novel. In every way possible. So why bother pretending that she’s capable of attachments when the only thing that means a damn to her is chess? Ah, but that doesn’t make for a “relatable” enough character in “TV land” (now streaming service land). The emphasis must be made on the importance of subtlety in the conversion from novel to screen. Even something as “off-handed” as a racial slur. Specifically, where Jolene is still given the license to call Beth “cracker” in the show, thanks to the hyper-sensitivity of the times, Beth does not hit back with the retort of “nigger” at any point as she does in the book. Forget the commitment to historical or literary accuracy, this was another uncomfortable (and again, seemingly “throwaway”) moment Netflix would prefer not to take on—just like Jolene’s unwanted finger bang scene. It’s just too much for audiences of the present. Even her affinity with Benny is played down in terms of sexual tension. When she agrees to go with him to New York, they do spend their days locked in his apartment practicing strategy. An apartment described with more evocative detail by Tevis, who is sure to mention that Benny had a “whole shelf [of the] Shakhmatny Byulleten going back to the nineteen-fifties.” While the “party” of three that shows up the night Beth
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 beats everyone at speed chess does occur, they do not end up having sex until days later, under much soberer pretenses on Benny’s part, who finally simply states, “I’d like you to come to bed with me.” At the “party” in the show,
Benny is blatantly turned on by Beth’s ability to now beat him and his other two friends at speed chess while the
French girl, Cleo, watches (it sounds très double entendre, and it’s supposed to). Indeed, everything about the scene is laden with sexual innuendo when written by Tevis, who illustrates Beth on the floor as she says, “‘Let’s do it again’... There was a bitterness in her voice; hearing the words, she knew it could have meant sex: Let’s do it again.
If this was what Benny wanted, this was what he would get… They got into position on the floor…” Yes, sexual as all get-out. So no wonder Frank sees fit to keep the
Tevis-created dialogue, “Nobody has done that to me in fifteen years.”
Benny says this to Beth after the others leave. She presses, “Not even Borgov?”
He affirms, “Not even Borgov.” It is after this that Benny confesses to being far more drunk than Beth’s “sober as a judge” status. He then pulls her toward him and they finally do what
Beth tried to well before she arrived in
NY. Show Beth panders to his ego far more. “That’s what it’s supposed to feel like,” Show Beth notes breathlessly after they’ve finally relieved their mounting desire. Book Beth, on the other hand, is much more of the “that don’t impress me much” mindset, with the far less excited assessment,
“Making love had been all right too, although not as exciting as she had hoped.” In no uncertain terms, it was not as though Benny had “blown her mind,” even in comparison to the other non-lothario men she’d been with (a guy from Russian class and
Beltik).
What’s more, Book Benny does not advise her to play the Sicilian 72.
Defense against Borgov when they’ve finished boning. He tells her, “You shouldn’t try the Sicilian against Borgov… He’s just too good at it.” Show Benny, instead, urges, “In your game with Borgov, you should play the Sicilian.” Beth questions, “Why? It’s what he’s so good at.” Benny explains, “It’s also what you’re most comfortable with. You should always play your line, never his. Play what’s best for you.” This is a sentiment that connotes the sort of “La La Land” version of how to get what you want. As though “believing in yourself” is all it really takes. Book Beth would have never fallen for this yarn. Granted, even Book Beth isn’t immune. Especially when she’s forced to admit to herself after Benny abruptly tells her he has to go to a poker game the day after their first “consummation” that his “behavior was like his chess game: smooth and easy on the surface but tricky and infuriating beneath. She did not like tagging along, but she did not want to go back to the apartment and study alone.” Thus, she succumbs to this trip to his poker game, held at the Algonquin (maybe the show just didn’t want to add that location into the budget). She leaves out of boredom, and blind anger. It dawns on her that he’s a “cool son of a bitch. It was quick sex with her, and then off to the boys. He had probably planned it that way for a week. Tactics and strategy. She could have killed him.” Benny’s apt decision to time their sex when he would need to go to a poker game after, therefore not really address the new shift in their relationship, is part and parcel of his distancing nature. Even so, it doesn’t stop Beth from continuing to take advantage of having a “lover” before she heads to Paris. The show, in contrast, makes it seems as though they have a one-off fuck session. Tevis paints an alternate portrait with, “They continued as lovers and did not play any more games, except from the books. He went out for a few days for another poker game and came back with two hundred in winnings and they had one of their best times in bed together, with the money beside them on the night table. She was fond of him, but that was all. And by the last week before Paris, she was beginning to feel that he had little left to teach her.” So again, Watts is something of a more palatable Beltik to Beth. Ah, and speaking of Beltik, another key change to a significant interaction between him and Beth occurs when she plays again at the Kentucky State Championship. In the show, Beltik arrives to give her another sermon about his concern, whereas in the book, a worried Beltik does not confront her outside. However, where Show Beth flees the scene after her emotional exchange with Beltik, Book Beth ends up losing to a lesser opponent because of her alcoholic haze. It is this embarrassment that leads her to wonder, “And what was wrong with her mind? She hadn’t had a drink for a day and two nights. What was wrong? In the pit of her stomach she was beginning to feel terrified. If she had somehow damaged her talent…” Such a fear is the primary reason this plot point of her losing to a basic player is included, to provide her with the most sobering wake up call of all. For if she was to become subpar, or even par, as a player, it would mean the shattering of her world. Chess isn’t what she does, but who she is. To lose it would be to have no identity anymore. There are other “minute” tidbits that vary between screenplay and manuscript. For instance, the girl who comes to Benny’s apartment is not a French model and does not meet up with Beth in Paris. This Cleo character, who seems to awaken in this version of Beth the same lesbianic exploration Jolene awakened in the novel, is ostensibly based on Jenny
Baynes, the name of Benny’s female guest in Tevis’ story. That there is no lesbian tryst between them in the book (because Cleo does not exist in it) means that the “Russian spy theory” posited by fans can only be applied to the series. Most deviant of all in the show is that it starts with Beth waking up completely hungover in a Parisian hotel room, having overslept for her big match against Borgov. In the novel, while in Paris (a plot point never featured at the beginning), Beth doesn’t lose to Borgov because she got drunk the night before. She loses simply because she was still not yet prepared. Other standout distinctions from the book include the fact that Beth is the one who reconnects with Jolene by contacting Deardorff. Jolene does not just show up at Beth’s door seeking her out. In the book, they meet at a restaurant where Beth suppresses her intense desire to drink alcohol, instead opting for Coke (after Coke after Coke). In place of Jolene being the one to tell Beth about Mr. Shaibel’s death as she does in the show, it is Deardorff who informs her of the custodian’s passing, after Beth comes home from a game of squash (a “rich white people” sport Show Jolene alludes to learning how to play herself while driving Beth back to the orphanage). Furthermore, Jolene does not lend Beth $3,000 to go to Moscow after she gives the Jesus freak (“Christian Crusade”) people their sponsorship money back. Notably, Frank sees fit to insert a scene before Jolene and Beth arrive back at Methuen, with the latter evidently wanting to reveal to her friend how hard her life was from the start by telling her to stop at the trailer she started to grow up in before the car crash. Definitely not anywhere in the book is Beth’s expressed backstory, “My mama came from money. Then she married into more of it.” Jolene asks, “Then how’d y’all end up way out here?” All Beth can say is, “It’s complicated.” It’s a rather superfluous scene, and could have probably been swapped out in favor of adding Benny’s poker one instead. Oh, and by the way, Book Benny is way more upset with Beth for not coming back to New York after she fails in Paris. Though the dialogue between them on the telephone is almost precisely the same, there is one omission that makes all the difference in how venomous Benny comes across as he screams at her, “You asshole!... You crazy fucking asshole!” Instead, Frank wields only the line that follows, “First you don’t come back to New York and then you basically tell me that you’d rather be a drunk than be with me… You can fucking well go [to Moscow] alone.” Another conspicuous absence in Frank’s account of events is Beth’s trip to San Francisco after Jolene whips her into shape at the gym (being on a Physical Education scholarship at the university and all). Jolene’s brief tutelage is already enough to make a dent in her physical shape after so long spent doing nothing but binge drinking. This much is demarcated when Tevis writes, “Looking back at the bay, she saw a young couple a block away climbing toward her. They were clearly out of breath and stopped to rest. Beth realized with surprise that the climb had been easy for her.” All thanks to Jolene’s intervention. Alas, though Jolene might be able to help with Beth’s mind and body, she cannot help with her bank account, and does not lend Beth $3,000. Book Jolene has no such amount. Jolene’s elevation in economic status is at least partially a product of The Queen’s Gambit being released at a time when the importance of presenting Black people—especially Black women—as not “less than” is more crucial than ever. So, rather than settling for being a public relations shill for a law firm as she does in the novel, Show Jolene is on her way to becoming a lawyer, in the midst of having an affair with a white married man who has given her the car she’s driving Beth in. Book Jolene also calls herself “an imported nigger to stay even with the times” for the law firm in Atlanta that’s hired her. Show Jolene puts it less bluntly with, “Instead of the usual Black cleaning woman, they wanted a clean, Black woman.” As Jolene drives them back to the orphanage, Beth’s contempt for her youth, and the “raising” she was subjected to, is more pronounced with gradation in the novel, which leads to Beth, even after all these years, throwing Deardorff under the bus for making her “punishment” as a child no longer being allowed to play chess when being interviewed in Moscow by Paris Match and Time, as though at last getting some form of vindication for her repressed upbringing in the orphanage. A paragraph that speaks to her particular brand of torment as she was growing up is as follows: “She had never thought of anyone encouraging her. It began to enter her mind now, standing in front of the building. She could have played in tournaments at nine or ten, like Benny. She had been bright and eager, and her mind was voracious in its appetite for things that people like Shaibel and Ganz could never teach her. Girev was planning at thirteen to be World Champion. If she had had half his chances, she would have been as good at ten. For a moment the whole autocratic institution of chess merged in her mind with the autocracy of the place where she was now standing. Institutions. There was no violation of Christianity in chess, any more than there was a violation of Marxism. It was nonideological. It wouldn’t have hurt Deardorff to let her play—to encourage her to play.” Instead, “it pleased her” not to let Beth 73.
The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 do so. Such is the way of autocratic (a.k.a. sadistic) institutions, whether in the West or the East. As for Show Beth’s so-called dream boy, Townes never shows up in Moscow, nor is it ever inferred that he veers toward the preference of men. However, the kernel of the idea for Townes to appear in the last episode might have stemmed from
Beth wishing he would arrive at the Kentucky State Championship again, elucidated with, “In the back of her mind she had hoped Townes might show up with a camera, but there was no sign of him.” Another seed of this idea is while she’s riding on the plane to the USSR, with
Tevis illuminating, “For a moment she let herself imagine traveling with D. L. Townes, the two of them staying together in Moscow. But that was no good. She missed Benny, not
Townes. She missed Benny’s quick and sober mind, his judgment and tenacity, his knowledge of chess and his knowledge of her. He would be in the seat beside her, and they could talk chess, and in Moscow after her games they would analyze the play and then plan for the next opponent.
They would eat their meals together in the hotel, the way she had done with Mrs. Wheatley. They could see
Moscow, and whenever they wanted to they could make love at their hotel.” Although the screenwriter finds Townes to be the man she wants to see most while in Moscow (therefore wills it so)—requiring a fairly sizable amount of suspension of disbelief—it is Benny she yearns for in the novel. As a result of the tiring and painstaking process of it all— playing such high-level opponents for every game—Beth doesn’t really get a chance to go out and explore much… as usual. Something that harkens back to Mrs. Wheatley trying to persuade Beth to see the sights 74.
with her in Mexico City. And, going back to that geographical moment in the series, when Beth’s flashbacks to Mr. Shaibel in the basement are pitted against the book, they do not consist of dialogue. In the show, Shaibel is positioned to offer up his best version of Mr. Miyagi-inspired wisdom, with one notable instance being at the Mexico City zoo, when she recalls him warning her, “People like you have a hard time. Two sides of the same coin. You’ve got your gift. And you’ve got what it costs. Hard to say for you what that will be. You’ll have your time in the sun, but for how long?” A prime example of “gifts” and “talents” only seeming to be impressive in a person when they’re young, there is an ongoing theme of time running out for Beth—more than the average, ungifted plebe. But the time, to use a cliche, is now. In Moscow. Her chance to truly shine and prove to this male-dominated atmosphere (and the male-dominated world at large) what she’s capable of. When she at last does make it out for a bit of exploring, we come to find that the ending of the book is presaged by a scene during which she already walks through the park and discovers the slew of old men playing chess, whereas this initial encounter is removed from the show to make the moment come across as even more poignant within the context of the last scene. Or rather, perhaps a type of forced poignance. Speaking to this, as Beth plays Borgov for the first time in Mexico City, she assesses of his game, “Everything he was doing was obvious, unimaginative, bureaucratic.” As entertaining and well-made as it is, the same can be said of the Netflix adaptation of the novel. And yet, like Borgov’s game, there’s a reason it has drawn so much success, such an endless barrage of accolades. They did not opt for subtlety or intuitiveness in their game (as Beth is known to do). Rather, they played it methodically by the numbers as they picked which details to sensationalize and which ones to eliminate altogether.
