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From Elgar's Xmas Double Toughie:

Film day: champion on board having enjoyable time squeezing into slipper (19, 4 words)

"Film" is the def and it's missing its first word; the rest is wordplay for the last 4 words of the film.

wedDINGs and a funeral

Ding (Liren) is very useful for setters, but if he doesn't play again soon he will be the forgotten world champion and too specialist a name for a general cryptic.

... and yet Tree is still synonymous with actor, I suspect for little other reason than the letters are useful

A little chess knowledge required for today’s Genius puzzle… I won’t give the enumeration as special instructions are involved.

Deadly force - Alekhine's opening by chess champion

Guardian 29,268 (Yank)

11 Actress reportedly to bear chess prodigy (6,6)

It's the prodigy one might expect to be cited by this setter. ;-)

Hi Geeker, Happy New Year:-)

I don't know if you saw MC's game against Yu Yangyi in the World Blitz Championship but, if not, it's well worth a look:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBPLw9ANQOA

Also, I was reading on the BBC news website (I think) last week about a Chinese player banned for erm... having beads on him (or should that be in him) - it seems to be on the increase!

@184 - always good to see Carrie:-)

Thanks, Brendan. That was an exceptional blitz game. I don't think MC's concepts would have been extraordinary in a slow time control setting, but remarkable in blitz.

Funny thing...I hadn't seen the game, but as soon as John called out "Here comes a novelty on White's 5th move", I immediately guessed 5. h2-h3. Principle of "most reasonable looking weird move", I'm actually surprised it's a novelty. [Compare the Najdorf Sicilian, probably Black's best chess opening, where (paradoxically) any non-ridiculous 6th move by White , including the trendy 6. h3, is eminently playable. 🤣]

jono@183 FATAL
geeker@184 CARRIE FISHER

Chess champions Tal, Fischer captured the public imagination. Ding scarcely but he has already proved useful for clueing. Kasparov almost a household name but awkward for clueing, similarly Carlsen. Nor would The Times have them as solutions since they are still alive.

Geeker@184 yes, Yank seems to be a new setter. A couple of US literary references, one of which I didn’t know (the relative, a Tom Sawyer reference I think?), which might lead us to think this is an American setter.
Also, I wondered if it is more usual to refer to university as “college” in the US. College=U seemed a bit odd.