In the book, they locked open the teleporter network to thousands of Psychlo worlds, then set a nuke off on the homeworld. The fireball washed over the teleportation fields of other teleporter platforms and ignited thousands of planets in giant nuclear fireballs.
I haven't read the book or seen the movie, but holy shit that sounds awesome.
What we know about explosions at any scale tells us nothing about the Big Bang, which was not an explosion.
The Big Bang was an expansion of space, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's not useful to consider similarities between explosions and expansions. The fact that matter and energy in the universe are not perfectly uniform and symmetrical is evidence that the Big Bang, even the singularity itself if there was one, was not uniform or symmetrical. If it was then there had to be an outside influence creating the asymmetry.
...and then you'll get a run of situations where someone spikes whatever the competitors are drinking at the tournament... so that 95% of the contestants end up disqualified, making the advantage that much easier.
The ones who are left are likely drinking mind-enhancing fluids anyway.
Or even likelier, hiring third parties to swing batons at competitors' fingers and hands, rendering them physically unable to move the chess pieces and unable to focus due to the pain. Or playing footsie with them under the table to break their concentration. Or building up a resistance to a nerve toxin over decades, then releasing a small amount into the room to kill everyone but their self. If I were going to cheat at professional chess competitions, I'd probably invent an FTL drive and ask the Vulcans if I could borrow Spock, as he's pretty good at chess. If that failed, I could intentionally become assimilated by the Borg and introduce a virus into their hive mind that both gave me free will and ran Chessmaster 9000. Failing that, I'd probably just have to nuke the entire planet from orbit, then carefully plant evidence that I'd won every chess competition ever held during my lifetime. Any future sentient species a few billion years down the road would be like, "Man, that guy was fucking boss at chess."
Lots of time between moves.
That certainly helps me understand how this could happen without arousing too much suspicion. At least one possible cheating vector has now been identified, if not eliminated. The down side is that it's hard to believe this guy was the only one taking advantage of that sort of strategy, and there's no way to tell who else cheated. Reminds me of the steroid scandal in baseball way back; the whole sport's been stained, with everyone's stats in question.
Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.