In Any Language, Victory Sounds Good to Tough Team

--They’re described as tough competitors from tough neighborhoods, but the question remains: How tough are they across the chessboard? This week, 12 students from Junior High School 99 in East Harlem, N.Y., will find out how tough they are after they arrive in the Soviet Union for two weeks of chess competition. Actually, the accent will be on cooperation, not competition, said William Hall, teacher and coach of the team known as the Royal Knights. They will be paired with Soviet chess players in Soviet-American team play. “We’ll all happy that we’re going to be representing the United States,” 15-year-old Jose Tavarez of East Harlem said. “We’re very excited.” The idea for the “competition” came from the reigning women’s chess champion, Maya Chiburdanidze of the Soviet Union, who suggested the visit during a tournament in New York last fall. The students learned a number of Russian words but the one they hope to use most often is the one for . . . “checkmate.”

--Wedding bells rang out in Hudson, Wis., over the weekend for Eleanor Mondale, 28, daughter of former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, and Keith Van Horne, 30, Chicago Bears offensive tackle and former USC player. Mondale, who is writing a book about the children of presidents, was married at the home of her maternal grandparents in a ceremony attended by about 45 guests, including her father and mother, Joan, as well as her brothers, Ted and William, who served as ushers. Performing the ceremony were the bride’s maternal grandfather, John Maxwell Adams, a retired Presbyterian minister; her uncle, Lester Mondale, a Unitarian minister, and the Rev. David Crow, a Presbyterian minister. Judy Whittlesay, a family friend, said: “It was a traditional ceremony. After the ceremony, there was the traditional showering of the bridal couple with popcorn. Well, scratch the word traditional.”

--Novelist Saul Bellow has won the highest awards for literature--the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes. Now, the author of “Herzog,” “Mr. Sammler’s Planet,” “The Dean’s December” and “More Die of Heartbreak,” his most recent, collected Northwestern University’s highest honor, the Alumni Award. Bellow is a 1937 graduate of Northwestern and now serves as a University of Chicago professor.