I don't understand. How can you start learning to play chess after solving a chess problem? The rules of chess are not intuitive.
No idea, but he studied this chess board for quite some time and then offered a possible solution to his parents, who seemed a little surprised too. They then decided to teach him to play chess. Does sound strange, but its been mentioned in quite a number of books and magazines I've read over the years.
Also there's quite a distinction between learning the moves of chess, and learning how to play chess well. The first can take a month, the latter a lifetime and not succeed. I'm referring to Garry learning to play chess in regards to making a living with it, not learning the basic moves - apologies.
Neither. Since he's Russian so it would be in Cyrillic (Don't even ask me about the spelling combinations of Korchnoi, Ivanchuk and Nimzowitsch I've seen - its all because the names are non-English, and created in "other" letters :-) ). A rough translation would be Garri, but commonly in English print he's referred to as Garry (two R's in both cases).