Doing your job, and not a jot more – ‘quiet quitting’ – became one of the buzzphrases of 2022. In The Spectator, Stephen Daisley lauded this as the philosophy of the clear-eyed pragmatist, not the layabout, and wondered when more young employees would cotton on.

Was Magnus Carlsen thinking along the same lines? For the time being, he remains the world champion in classical chess, and many believe that his job, his grand duty, is to defend the title at all costs.