"[1] He has been "portrayed by his detractors as a Dr. Frankenstein" and viewed by his admirers as "a Houdini", noted Peter Maas in the Washington Post in 1992.

He later recalled that "when I looked at the life stories of geniuses" during his student years, "I found the same thing...They all started at a very young age and studied intensively.

"[4] He prepared for fatherhood before marriage, reported People Magazine in 1987, by studying the biographies of 400 great intellectuals, from Socrates to Einstein.

"[2] In 1965, Polgár "conducted an epistolary courtship with a Ukrainian foreign language teacher named Klara."

They had three daughters together, Susan, Sofia, and Judit, whom Polgár home-schooled, primarily in chess but also in Esperanto, German, Russian, English, and high-level math.

[5][6] Polgár and his wife considered various possible subjects in which to drill their children, "including mathematics and foreign languages", but they settled on chess.

"[7] The experiment began in 1970 "with a simple premise: that any child has the innate capacity to become a genius in any chosen field, as long as education starts before their third birthday and they begin to specialize at six.

It included records of previous games for endless analytical pleasure and even an index of potential competitors' tournament histories."

"Six months later, Susan toddled into Budapest's smoke-filled chess club," which was crowded with elderly men, and proceeded to beat the veteran players.

"[11] While Polgár taught the girls the game, Klara took care of the home and later "coordinated their travels to tournaments in 40 countries."

His daughter Susan said in a 2005 interview, "My father believes that innate talent is nothing, that [success] is 99 percent hard work."

Still, Sophia, the least successful of the three, who became the sixth-best woman player in the world, quit playing, studied painting and interior design, and focused on being a housewife and mother.

"[6] Interviewed in 1993, Polgár was described by William Hartston as resembling "a disgruntled garden gnome" who replied to questions "in a musical voice, with an evangelical tone and a tendency to stare into space."

Hartston said that Polgár wore "the scars of weariness after decades of battling against Hungarian chess organizers who wanted his daughters to play in women's tournaments rather than competing against men, and educational authorities who sent an armed policeman to drag Zsuzsa off to school."

Hartston noted that because Polgár had ended up fathering three daughters, he had been forced to confront issues of sexual inequality.

Amir Harel, producer of the documentary, said that the story of the Polgárs "touches upon many aspects of life: the educational experiment, the underlying ideology, the heroic fight against the Communist regime, issues pertaining to the equality of the sexes, family relationships, and even love stories.

Filmmaker Yossi Aviram said that "Years of abuse by the authorities and media made the family suspicious" of people who wanted to make a film about them.

"[1] An early draft of the screenplay for the film Whiplash featured an extensive discussion of Polgár and his theories on child-rearing.

"[17] In 2023, Zsuzsa Polgár claimed in a Facebook post that "in good part" she had been the author of this book solely attributed to her father.