Talks of speed chess finishing early (8)
I believe the answer is:
speeches
'talks' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both related to communication as well as being plural nouns.
Maybe there's a link between them I don't understand?
'speed chess finishing early' is the wordplay.
'speed' becomes 'spee' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'finishing early' means to remove the last letter (the word finishes earlier than normal).
'chess' with its last letter taken off is 'ches'.
'spee'+'ches'='SPEECHES'
'of' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for speeches that I've seen before include "Formal communications to audiences" , "Formal words to audiences" , "Formal spoken communications" , "Dialogues" , "Orations" .)