Non-chess usage of "patzer"?

Question

I've heard the word patzer used to describe an incompetent or amateurish chess player. Is it ever used in a non-chess context?

Sven Yargs · Accepted Answer

Yes, patzer evidently is (or at least has been) sometimes used in a nonchess context, as we see in this excerpt from Victor Niederhoffer, The Education of a Speculator (1998):

As I trust has become abundantly clear by now, I have followed all my father's advice as closely as the Greeks followed the Delphic oracle. While I was courting the future Mrs. Niederhoffer, who not only understood my profession but helped to create it as my assistant, I figured I should expose her to the board games as a litmus test. I took her to the  game tables at Washington Square Park, where I had played many games with my father as a boy. I prevailed on Susan to wait while I tried to get a game. Traditionally, veteran checkers players at the park won't play with a stranger because they don't want to waste time on a "patzer." I asked a number of players for a game, but they all refused. Finally, someone said, "Junior will play you."

So patzer has been used, in essentially the same sense, in both chess and checkers. Venturing even farther afield, we find this, in ISLA, volume 8 (1974) [combined snippets]:

I spent much of my time on the tennis courts. For those who grudgingly shell out $20 or $30 an hour for indoor courts. in New Yok, St. Croix is a patzer's paradise. There are some fine courts available at several hotels—the Buccaneer, St. Croix-by-the-Sea, the Caribbean ReefClub—and there is a lovely new tennis club high on Mount Royal.

But in the vast majority of instances, the milieu is chess, and most slang and idiom dictionaries focus on that angle. For, example, John Ayto, Oxford Dictionary of Slang (1999) has this entry for the term, under the category heading "Chess":

patzer (1959) Applied to a weak player; origin uncertain; compare German patzen bungle [Example:] Daily Telegraph: So Fischer after besting off a ferocious attack ...'played like a patzer', said one  American Grandmaster, 'went to sleep on the job' said another. (1972)

And from Harold Wentworth & Stuart Flexner, Dictionary of American Slang (1960):

patzer n. An inferior chess player. Although said to be from the Yiddish, there is no Yiddish, German, or Hebrew word or word combination to suggest it. Prob. from "patsy" with the familiar"—er" ending added.

Robert Chapman, New Dictionary of American Slang (1986), however, is less inclined to write off the possible connection to Yiddish:

patzer or potzer n A mediocre but often enthusiastic chess player {probably fr Yiddish; see potsky [defined in the book under an entry for "potchkie or potchky or potsky" as "To putter; tinker; =MESS"]}

The earliest mention of the term that I've been able to find is from the American Mercury, volume 20 (1930) [combined snippets:

I was then the queer little shaver who earned his livelihood by playing anyone and everyone at so much a game at akl hours of the day and night. One thing that attracted me to the East Side was the fact that most men earned there living in just the same way. Another thing — most of the men were older than I, much older, some of them patriarchs. Still another—they were cultivated. When we weren't playing or talking chess, we talked about music and books: I went to school over there. And I learned philosophy without calling it such. We had no abstract words for what we felt and thought. When we wearied of talk, "Let's have another game—" there was always that. And no one was so hard up that there wasn't someone worse off. I remember the proprietor of a chess cafe who let the addicts sleep on or under tables overnight. I remember a potzer too proud for such beds. If he lost instead of won, he'd sleep on park benches. None of us found that out till he died on one. Then we chipped in to save him from Potter's Field. A witty fellow he was; none wittier over there over there where wit is an essential weapon to losers.

I couldn't confirm the date of this publication, but 1930 was indeed the year that volume 20 of the American Mercury was published, and I'm inclined to accept the dating of this article as probably accurate. If it is, patzer/potzer is at least 29 years older than Ayto gives it credit for being—and the setting of the reported events (Second Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan) and the spelling potzer add a bit more support to the notion that patzer was derived from a Yiddish word.

SAH · Answer

I'd like to comment on potential Yiddish sources of this word, although obviously a more straightforward etymology is strictly by way of German "patzen," to bungle. ("Patzer" may have nonetheless entered chess lexicon through one of the more germanized Yiddish dialects, since after all it is Jews, not Germans, who play chess [with apologies to Magnus Carlssen].) 
In Yiddish there are:

potshontek plural potshontkes, gender m, beginning, start (source here)
patshken  (source here)
and finally, pots  (ibid.)

"Patzer" is however not a Yiddish word in current use, from my own moderately-informed assessment.

JEL · Answer

"Is [patzer] ever used in a non-chess context?" seemed at first to be a very low bar to clear; that appearance was soon belied by the search. Discounting surnames for the moment (although I will of necessity return to them when providing an origin story), and cleaving to the spirit of the challenge by ruling out game and sport contexts, a use or two in non-game and non-sport contexts did eventually appear; these cleared the "ever" bar, but barely.

OED is content to provide two forms: 'patzer' and 'potzer', both attested from the 1900s. The former, 'patzer', is attested by quotes from 1972 and 2002; the latter, 'potzer', is attested by quotes from 1948 and 1962.

For "ever" use of 'potzer', I uncovered a pun in The Age (Melbourne, Australia; paywalled) of 17 Jul 1997, in an article titled "Goat man and other mysterio catastrophes":

And even if you don't understand a thing on the menu like the lemon couscous or the Mediterranean aioli crouton or the haloumi, don't worry, no one else does either.
     The secret is to order anything that starts with a P: polenta, pancetta, pecorino or pasta in pineapple chutney, don't ask, just eat, you potz-er.

The other secret known to this reporter, but not shared explicitly, is that it doesn't matter if you don't mean a word of the article you're writing.

A second "ever" use of 'potzer' was this, pried from the COHA corpus:

He was also prone to migraine headaches, and in the last couple of years, that potzer Rogan next door had taken to calling him "Morris the Cat." Morris had wondered aloud to Lydia, his second wife, how Rogan would like it if Morris took up calling him "Rogan the hemorrhoid."  
  
  Different Seasons, Stephen King, 1982.

For 'patzer', this appeared:

Why am I left slaying my very own soul when my setup is lost in his rosy, bedded eye, his hidden, preying eye gladly digesting my 8:16 innocence? This time the patzer must be of the lowest rank, and his foot must be in his toss. His best cast were three sixes, his worst, Canis. 
  
  Occultus Liber, Neil Baker, 2014.

It's difficult to say exactly what the context of the appearance on page 8 of the 914 pages of Occultus Liber is, but it doesn't seem to be chess, sports, or games, unless "rank" is to be interpreted as an obscure reference to chess or another game.

Returning to surnames, and particularly the surname 'Patzer', there are many instances throughout the texts I examined. Almost all of those instances would rightly be said to be in a "non-chess context", but a humorous 1893 name, used in a chess context, may explain the later adoption and use of 'patzer', from "German (colloquial) Patzer inveterate bungler (19th cent.) < patzen to bungle (19th cent.; probably < German regional (Austria)Patzen blot, of uncertain origin) + -er" (OED).

The year before the German player Emanuel Lasker took the World Chess Champion title (a title he then held for the next 27 years), he played in an international tournament at the Manhattan Chess Club, winning all 13 games. As reported, he did not play at the Club before the tournament, as was usual for the foreign players:

Lasker, on the other hand, never touched a piece at the Club, but took plenty of exercise in the park. The Anglo-German champion believes in bodily training, and is of opinion that it is time enough for playing chess when the bell rings for the commencement of the tournament.
     Wednesday evening [the tournament began on Saturday], however, Lasker made an exception and went to "Die Freundschaft" [a New York German social club], where he had to play a game. There is a story of this game which is as interesting as it is new to the great bulk of chess-players.
     A member of the club, who, in the German chess parlance, would be called E. I. N. Patzer, was bold enough to say at the club last Winter that Lasker could not give him the odds of a rook and move, and backed his boast by a bet of $50. The bet was taken, but the game could not be played last season because of Lasker's departure for Havana.
     Wednesday Lasker was asked to comodate [sic] Mr. Patzer, and there was a big crowd of players at the "Freunschaft" when the latter opened the game, Lasker adopting a Sicilian defence. The game and the $50 were won by Lasker after twenty moves.  
  
  The Evening World (New York, New York), 30 Sep 1893 (paywalled).

The "German parlance" mentioned, "E. I. N. Patzer", translates as "one [ein] inveterate bungler", and it is likely this early patzer who supplied the noun for later use by English-speaking chess players.

Non-chess usage of "patzer"?

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