Comments by nelk114

To be fair, Cattle are ungulates too, and I suspect in some ways perhaps more apt for such a weak piece (not only is its leap quite long and awkward, but it's also bound to 1/4 of the board like the Dabbaba) — certainly Stag would suggest to me something stronger. Ofc in Gilman's case he also wants to be able to extrapolate (to Zherolais, Ghirolais ⁊c. for 6:4, 2:8, ⁊c. leapers) so he's constrained in his naming by that.

I think the rules were clear, just that Betza notation does not describe it unambiguously. Though it seems reasonable to interpret crooked moves as continuing in the outwardmost direction by default, unless otherwise specified, in which case t[WzB] would indeed describe the Harvestman (the other option is then not covered by the original Betza notation, though something like t[WfhzB] would probably be clear enough)

This bears an uncanny resemblance, even down to the name chosen for the extra piece, to George Duke's Variant, though the pawns' multi‐step move is novel afaict.

That game's non‐leaping (‘multi‐path’) falcon was measured as being a little more valuable than a rook (albeit on 8×10), so I wouldn't be at all suprised for the leaping one to be more powerful yet.

It looks like the restriction is being applied over‐eagerly: I tried adding the square‐removal tag to Cheshire Cat and Wormhole Chesses but in both cases it tells me I mayn't tag a deleted page.

It seems that multi‐capturing two‌‐square leapers are oddly popular as knight enhancements: this game has the multi‐capture apparently mandatory for when going to Alibaba destinations, but still allows leaping otherwise; Larry Smith's Li Qi replaces knights with ‘Young’ Chu‐shogi lions, which cannot move back to the starting square, to match its planar linepieces; and ofc H. G.'s Mighty‐lion Chess replaces one knight with a full Lion.

I wonder why?

We seem to be seeing different things then. https://www.chessvariants.com/tag/Parent%3AChild lists the #Parent child under the heading ‘Parent’, but #Parent: Child: Grandchild is, for me, nowhere to be found on that page.

Abdication could be represented by putting [the prince] on top of 2 checkers

Or just replacing it with the king, since the latter gets removed from the board otherwise

Are those now the ‘default’ versions of the Hero and Shaman then? If so what do we call the non‐bent versions in the Chieftan variants: Linear (rejecting ‘straight’ as, like ‘bent’, perhaps overimplying somewhat)?

As for pieces that can only do slide‐then‐step and not the reverse, the only one that comes to mind in a game is the Transcendental Prelate.

While on its own the original diagram on this page was a bit obscure, in conjunction with Fergus' circular diagrams it really clarifies the rationale behind Nadvorney's interpretation of the diagonal move; a bit of thought also reveals why Miller's reasoning in keeping the bishop on its own colour is flawed: if the bishop stays on its own colour you would expect a rook stepping over the pole to change colour as it does on a normal square‐cell board, whereas here (or on any spherical/Klein‐bottle‐shaped board with a multiple of four files) it doesn't. On e.g. a 10‐file board, Miller's reasoning would line up with Nadvorney's.

As for Chess on the Dot, the change in the diagonal's handedness at the poles also keeps it on one colour (on a board of this parity), but isn't stirctly necessary for a closed loop: Nadvorney's version (as can be seen on its diagram) does it just as well, and even Miller's manages, albeit via a much more circuitous route.

Fwiw, here's the original diagram as salvaged from the Internet Archive:

c7  d7  e7  f7  g7  h7  a7  b7  c7  d7  e7  f7
c8  d8  e8  f8  g8  h8  a8  b8  c8  d8  e8  f8
g8  h8  a8  b8  c8  d8  e8  f8  g8  h8  a8  b8
g7  h7  a7  b7  c7  d7  e7  f7  g7  h7  a7  b7
g6  h6  a6  b6  c6  d6  e6  f6  g6  h6  a6  b6
g5  h5  a5  b5  c5  d5  e5  f5  g5  h5  a5  b5
g4  h4  a4  b4  c4  d4  e4  f4  g4  h4  a4  b4
g3  h3  a3  b3  c3  d3  e3  f3  g3  h3  a3  b3
g2  h2  a2  b2  c2  d2  e2  f2  g2  h2  a2  b2
g1  h1  a1  b1  c1  d1  e1  f1  g1  h1  a1  b1
c1  d1  e1  f1  g1  h1  a1  b1  c1  d1  e1  f1
c2  d2  e2  f2  g2  h2  a2  b2  c2  d2  e2  f2 

Charles Gilman called these Zephyr and Lama respectively, though by his description they cannot make the one‐step move that I'm not sure whether you're including. The latter also turns up as an Osprey in Expanded Chess

The Princess' diagram disagrees with the text in omitting sideways moves

Ok so you are indeed including the 1‐step move among the movement possibilities — I suppose your ‘2.manticore’ is different enough from a lame/stepping/blockable osprey/lama (and mutatis mutandis for the ‘2.gryphon’) to merit a different name… maybe. If it's not being distinguished from a ‘true’ osprey/zephyr in a single game I'd be tempted to leave that name as is, though avoiding going too near overlexicalisation is a personal preference.

If the distinction does need to be made within a game (at which point the tradeoff changes imo), then ‘2.manticore’(/‘2.griffon’) is probably fine, if perhaps closer to the (presumably also present in a game featuring both of these) actual manticore/griffin than might be desirable, though I'm not really one to ask for original name suggestions (and M&B13 is apparently lacking names for lama/rook and zephyr/bishop compound with which we could (ab)use M&B8's ‘‐lander’ suffix). Perhaps a name based on lama/zephyr/osprey/ostrich/whatever you want to call them would be more apt? ‘Running Osprey’ isn't altogether without a ring to it…

Does XBetza allow defining pieces that capture by stopping in the square just before the captured piece?

yamcfyambK comes close to defining a Queen that does that, aka Rococo's Advancer; it is, however, what Charles Gilman called a ‘Strict’ advancer, in that it also can't approach a friendly piece (as doing so would capture it), as well as (as a byproduct of the implementation) being unable to approach the edge once it's left it. Adding mQ would lift those restrictions at the expense of making the capture upon advance optional. Idk if it's possible to do better without extending the notation though

Another question I have is, does 0 have any meaning when used as a piece's range? If not, perhaps it could be used to indicate that a piece must move as far as possible in whichever direction it goes.

Afaict (istr it was declared explicilty at some point though idr where) 0 corresponds to unlimited range. gabQ handles going as far as possible provided there's a piece in the way, but is subject to the same edge case(!) as the advancer wrt the boundaries of the board — again I doubt it's possible to contrive a way around that without dedicated extensions

The chance of rolling a double is 1/36. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32313428/understanding-the-probability-of-a-double-six-if-i-roll-two-dice

The chance of rolling any given double (e.g., as in your link, a double 6) is indeed 1∕36. There are, however, six doubles to choose from, so the total probability is in fact 1∕6 of rolling any double.

The chance of rolling a single is 1/6 ⁓ but two dice thence double the likelihood of instances to 1/3

Alas, adding probabilities does not work that way. In effect you've counted the outcome of a double twice. The chance of rolling at least one of a given number with 2 dice is, in fact, 1−(1−1∕6)²=11∕36.

Back‐of‐the‐envelope translation:

este ajedrez tiene un tablero modificado de 73 casillas .

This chess [variant] has a modified board of 73 squares.

las piezas adicionales a las convencionales son :

The pieces in addition to the conventional ones are:

un canciller : torre + caballo .

A Chancellor: Rook+Knight

el omega que mueve dos en diagonal y salta a la segunda casilla en diagonal ademas ,puede saltar a la 2da. casilla en ortogonal con una pieza de por medio.

The Omega which moves 2 diagonally and jumps to the seconddiagonal square; additionally it can jump to the 2nd square orthogonally with a piece in between.

los peones se llaman columnas y pueden tambien mover una casilla en diagonal hacia atras en ambas direcciones si estas estan desocupadas.

Pawns are called Columns and can also move one square diagonally backwards in either direction if these are vacant

el rey es un Emperador : rey + caballo .

The king is an Emperor: King+Knight

reglas especiales :

Special Rules:

_se mueven dos fichas por turno pero solo se puede comer una vez por turno.

• Two pieces are moved per turn but only one capture may be made per turn

_una ficha no se puede mover dos veces en un solo turno..

• A piece cannot move twice in one turn

_por cada 4 piezas que un bando atrape obliga en el siguiente turno de su adversario a que reinicie una de las piezas que haya capturado como aliada.

• For every four pieces captures by a side, his opponent is obliged on his next turn to reintroduce one of the pieces he has captured on his side

_las piezas iniciadas comienzan en cualquier casilla de la 1era. fila de su bando.

• [Re‐]introduced pieces begin on any square on the 1st file of their side

_cuando un rey está en jaque puede salir de un mate intercambiando 2 piezas de jerarquia () por un cambio de posición hacia una casilla que esté libre. (es opcional).

• When a king [i.e. an emperor?] is in check he can escape mate by exchanging two pieces of hierarchy () [sic] for a change of position to an empty space (this is optional)

_el atacante escoge una pieza y la inicia como aliada , el atacado escoge la otra pieza..

• The attacker chooses a piece and introduces it on his side; the attackee selects the other piece

As to the “two” corner squares, removing two squares from each corner of a 9×9 board does in fact leave 73 squares, though whether the second square is vertically or horizontally adjacent to the square in the corner remains unclear. Presumably the promised diagram will clarify.

It looks as if it might mean bringing one's king to a space adjacent to the opponent's)? Would be not unlike Bachelor Chess (and a number of Gilman's) in that respect. Hence the commment about kings meeting on “their” — i.e. ‘one's own’ — half of the board, the case of 4th/5th ranks, and the note about “approaching” the opposing king.

Also the fifth paragraph remains given twice

the players start with […] a queen and a king and 8 pawns on their secind rank

All standard chess pieces except the king

The king isn't royal

These statements contradict each other. How can the player start with a king that's not in the game, and how can said king be non‐royal?

Also the rules regarding pawns are a bit unclear — am I right in inferring that a pawn effectively demotes upon reaching the last rank while adding a new ‘pawn’ (which can still move as a queen) into the pocket? thereby making the pawns a potentially infinite source of new pieces?

when playing the game one is generally attempting to achieve a particular double

Perhaps, but if that's what you meant it might be worth being clearer about that; the way it's phrased aþm suggests that the probability of being able to make any Séj‐dice capturing move (assuming availability of pieces to capture) is 1∕3+1∕36=13∕36, which doesn't really make sense (not least, that'd be likelier than merely being able to move even if the 1∕3 figure were correct). The actual probability is in fact, as dax00 said, 11∕36(=chance of matching the last piece to move)×1∕6(=chance of a double)=11∕216. The chance of any given piece being able to capture is 1∕6 of that again, i.e. 11∕1296.

since the fraction 11∕36 is almost a third, doesn't that in effect equate to 1∕3?

Well 1∕3=12∕36, so… no? It's close, sure, but still an 8.33% difference — if you consider that trivial enough to be discounted fine, but don't expect everyone (especially those of us with a mathematical inclination) to agree.

There is a 66.6% chance that, because each turn the dice MUST match the opponent's piece, thence the game will continue as regular Classical Chess

I also just noticed this remark; even aside from the percentage being wrong — the chance that a given turn will be ‘normal’ is 25∕36=69.44% — it's not clear whether you mean that to apply only to each turn, or (incorrectly) to the whole game. After 2 turns the likelihood of still having a normal game is 25∕36×25∕36=625∕1296 (less than 1∕2) and it keeps going down from there. Having a full game of Séj where the dice do not once allow a deviation from ‘classical’ chess is vanishingly unlikely.

Are there any plans to restore this functionality? Not sure whether the ongoing procedures with backups ⁊c make this a more or less opportune time to look into this, so if the latter it can ofc wait, but it'd be good to have it back eventually

I've been thinking a little about these pieces, as well as the ‘helical’ crooked riders that Fergus suggested here.

It seems to me these are instances of (modulo one detail, which I'll get to below) the same pattern that brought us the ‘modern’ elephant — i.e. the FA — wrt the original 2‐space‐diagonal Elephant: we have an original piece with a non‐coprime (as Charles Gilman would have it) leaping move and fill in the gap.

As such, it seems to me that, in line with mỹ initial intuitions in both cases, it's probably clearest imo to think of the helical pieces and the 2.bent riders as variations on respectively and lama–osprey/zephyr–ostrich rather than totally distinct pieces (or for that matter as immediate bishop/rook/queen or manticore/griffin derivatives)

The main difference between these and the modern elephant is that, the original piece having riding tendencies already, it seems more natural to have the ‘modern’ component be lame/stepping rather than leaping as in the elephant case. The ‘running’ elephant (as coined in the previous comment) would be a lame/stepping FA, or equivalently a B2.

I wonder whether there are many other piece‐types for which ‘running’ (or indeed ‘modern’) subspecies are useful? Running dababba‐/alfil‐/alibabariders, skip‐riders (panda/bear/harlequin), and slip‐riders (Tamerlane picket ⁊ al.) are just rooks/bishops/queens (and ‘modern’ ones the same but less blockable and this probably OP); running crooked dababba‐/alfil‐/alibabariders likewise reduce to lame contrabrueghels/‐proselytes/‐halcyons. Running alpacas/quaggas/okapis/⁊c. (i.e. alternating pairs of orthogonal and diagonal steps) — straight, curved, or switchback — are perhaps more promising, and not, imo, all too exotic; running nightriders/roses/nightfliers/‐sidlers/‐ladies, the same but starting with a single step, also bear considering, even if not strictly non‐coprime to begin with.

There's one other curious difference between the bent and crooked members of this family: as described, the bent ones can only make the remaining part of its move if the non‐coprime part is made in its entirety (i.e. the ferz/wazir move is to the exclusion of the rook/bishop one), whereas the crooked pieces must make both componets regardless (this difference is more pronounced when considering the time‐reversed versions, i.e. running contrazephyr/contraproselyte/⁊c.: the former is committed to a full alfil leap if it starts with a non‐zero rook move — the alternative would be the existing fimbriated griffon — while the latter has to make its final turn and ferz step lest it become equivalent to the aforementioned running crooked alfilrider (as well as curtailing its first, rather than its last alfil run; the pair with one time‐inverted but not the other is also possible, if a bit obtuse)). I'm not yet sure how best to describe that difference without special‐casing.

tl;dr: new category of pieces (tenatively named ‘running’) combining recent suggestions, with some further suggested extrapolations and some unanswered questions re semantics.

Assuming anyone actually makes it through this, any thoughts?

I believe this page to now be ready for publication

I was scrolling through some old comments and have found what Aurelian would call a 3.manticore posited by Sam Trenholme in this comment, alongside the ‘3.griffin’ and a bunch of others (the ’2.manticore’ or ‘running osprey’ is in there as well). No names alas, but still interesting to see these pieces having been discussed 12 years ago (almost to the day!).

It seems to me (on the topic of that thread) that simply the fact of having to count to three rather than either changing direction immediately or simply foregoing any counting altogether (griffon/manticore and hook mover/capricorn respectively) makes the ‘3.manticore’ non‐simple from a player's perspective; the ’2.manticore’/‘running osprey’ is kind of liminal in that respect — two‐step moves are still easily visualised and trivially interpolated — though even it is in some ways arguably more complicated than the component of Tim Stiles' fox and wolf, which only has immediate turns.

When saying ‘four squares’, is that counted inclusively or exclusively? In the former case, both king and rook moving ‘four’ squares each would in fact land next to each other, on the bishops and adjutant's squares on the queenside and the marshall's and knight's on the commanderside.

Originally posted on Pemba, where this piece is called a Crocodile.

I assume JL means this one? His page includes it thrice: that ‘close‐up’ at the beginning of the Rules section, the full page featuring it after the list of volumes in Alfonso's book, and a reproduction on a commemorative stamp at the end of the page

The dragon is indeed a t[FR], in Betza's original notation. However, that part of it was never documented on the Betza Notation page (instead languishing on the Chess on a Really Big Board page, though it turns up elsewhere too), and is arguably a little underspecified, so H. G.'s XBetza (which is what the interactive diagram uses) specifies such multi‐leg moves in its own way. In this extension, FyafsF is indeed equivalent to the original t[FR]

The vulture afaict is mainly a longer‐range relative of George Duke's (and more recently Uli Schwekendiek's) Falcon, whose advantage over the bison (from a game design perspective) is its blockability — presumably the same is sought here. Unfortunately, due to the multiple paths to a given destination, it is quite complex to describe. Idk about the extra knight move though, that's perhaps a little gratuitous (presumably to make up for the basic vutlre's lack of maneuverability?)

I agree the birds are quite complex, if potentially interesting to play with? And whether the knight/elephant enhancements are truly necessary may be worth a playtest as well

Ok, having actually gone to find a copy online, I agree that Tressau specifies the Kb/j–Rc/i castle; in principle one could still object that the example games may not be played by the original rules (while he says they're real, rather than constructed, games, it could still be under the influence of a misunderstanding), but it seems upon a cursory reading that for the Sultan's Game in particular his book may in fact be the original source? The Emperors Game is cited in the Spielarchiv, but Tressau explicitly notes (p.80) that a game with a Marshal had been suggested there but not described, rather being rejected due to the necessary odd number of files being unwieldy (in particular due to either same‐colour bishops or transposition of one bishop but not the other with its adjacent knight).

Unfortunately a quick search for the Archiv der Spiele online appears entirely fruitless so I can't confirm that…

Apparently I forgot to add the link to the XBetza page in my previous comment; I've now added it there.

yafsF is indeed the sliding part. a is as you've found, ‘again’; fs for w's and F's is interpreted as for a king, so for an F it changes to a W direction — and ‘forward’ for anything but the first part of the move is interpreted as ‘outward’ (like Alfonso about the rhinoceros); y is a ‘range toggle’ i.e. it switches from being a leaper/stepper to being a slider. Thus, yafsF is one step diagonally followed by a 45° turn and sliding orthogonally.

Complexity is in the eye of the beholder. It's not immediately obvious (especially compared to t[FR]) but it's apperntly easier to describe to a computer (and easier to generalise), which for the interactive diagrams is a definite plus

Indeed, that was my impression from his book as well; I'd initially missed the detail of how recent this variant was and had assumed it significantly older (and I don't trust people to count like we do today(!)).

I enjoyed the other papers you posted here and look forward to reading this one too

Indeed, it seems that either the knight's verbal description or its XBetza move has been exchanged with the one in the Modern game.

@Aurelian?

Afaict, it looks like Sin-yeon-sang-hui is a historical Janggi variant (though my Korean is nonexistent so I can't confirm any of what Daphne posted), and this is a back‐formation (‘dramatised’ is probably Google Translate or equivalent) of an an equivalent Xiàngqì‐derived variant.

Presumably the Korean original has no river and Korean‐style cannons/advisors/generals

a King, a Xiangqi Elephant, a Xiangqi Horse and a two-path lame Dabbabah (XBetza KaFafsW).

From the description (both here and of the Sliding General), shouldn't it be a three‐path lame dabbabah? Including the possibility of two consecutive same‐direction Wazir steps. That'd give KaFafsfW or KaFafsWnD

The Snaketongue is simple: a vertical W step followed by the outward turn is simply vWvyafsW (same as the manticore but with v prepended to each component).

The ship is trickier, as the first step can be in any direction and by the second step there's no way to specify which is the right twist (as there hasn't been a bend yet and l and r are relative). It may be worth special‐casing z and q here too(?) but meanwhile it can be done in a slightly hacky way involving the mp modality trick (i.e. a square that can either be empty or a mount, so it doesn't matter what's there). That gives two solutions: FvmpasyazW which (other than the F step) moves one forward, ignoring wahatever is there, turns 90° for another W step, then turns 90° again for the rest of the Rook move; or alternatively smpyasW which steps one space sideways, ignores what's there, then turns 90° and continues, now vertically, as a rook (note this latter one already includes the F step)

@HG:

quite incidentally while trying some of these, I input yafqF as a move, which seems to give a pandacub (Gilman's name for the forward‐only Slip‐rook, ft[WDD]) for some reason? Not sure exactly what I expected (though sth gryphon‐like would have made sense I think?) but it definitely wasn't that.

@Max

Game Courier doesn't (currently?) support games for more than two players. Idk how those four‐player variants were done, though it wouldn't surprise me if it's in teams where each player is suppoesd to control both armies in each team. (presumably these are not rule‐enforcing)

I feel like multiplayer games may technically be on Fergus' list of things to Maybe Eventually Add to GC (istr him mentioning it though I wouldn't hold him to that) but there's no support now and iirc probably requires a fairlyfundamental refactor at the very least

the same trouble with the bishop and queen.

It's not entirely clear what the analogous ‘error’ would be. In the REX King's and Glinski Pawns' cases it's using orthogonal moves to the exclusion of hex‐diagonal ones, while this knight apparently just miscounted the diagonal portion, resulting in a piece (which Charles Gilman terms a Student) which is analogous to the square‐cell Zebra.

A queen analogous to the REX king just becomes a rook, but that leaves the bishop completely unaccounted for.

Ofc, there are a few variants which take this version of king and queen as their basis and build the rest of the pieces around them: the oldest is Sigmund Wellisch's 3‐player game (for which this site unfortunately has only a Java Applet, though a more complete description is available e.g. on John Savard's page); the king moves one orthogonally, the knight to any nearest square that the king can't reach (there is a certain logic to calling the hex diagonals ‘leaps’, given that the relevant cells don't actually touch), the rook slides orthogonally, the queen moves as rook or knight (technically a marshal analogue therefore), and the pawn in either of the forwardmost directions (the board being oriented as in Fergus' Hex Shogis).

Alternatively, Gilman's Alternate Orthogonals Hex Chesses do exactly what the name suggests: assign alternate orthogonals as analogous to the square‐board directions, giving a REX king and Glinski pawns together with Wellisch knights, a rook as a ‘queen’, and ‘rooks’ and ‘bishops’ which have each other's move but backwards — albeit this being Charles Gilman, the pieces all have ifferent names. This one had quite a positive reception, and it does preserve some aspects of square‐cell chess that other analogies lack (some of which are touched on in its comments) — it's certainly worth a look

Merry (belated) Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!

A possible counterargument to 12×12 being too much for a ‘standard’ might be Chu Shōgi — after all, it was the most popular Chess in Japan before the introduction of drops to its smaller brother.

I'd expect a ‘Next Chess’ would be likely to at least have a single set of basic rules (i.e. regarding check, promotion, winning conditions, ⁊c.), probably the FIDE ones, though arguably even there there is some tweaking that might be worth doing; I would be very much in favour, though, of a poker‐like situation where multiple games (probably just different piece sets, in practice) enjoyed comparable popularity — and might even be mixed regularly in both casual and tournament play.

I believe you want checkaride instead of checkride — the latter checks all directions symmetrically (making a full gryphon plus conditional wazir moves), while the former is asymmetric.

Presumably if your suggestion for the Ship is otherwise correct, the snaketongue would similarly be:

def G fn (checkaride #0 #1 1 1 and empty #0)
    where #0 0 1
    #1
    or fn (checkaride #0 #1 -1 1 and empty #0)
    where #0 0 1
    #1
    or fn (checkaride #0 #1 1 -1 and empty #0)
    where #0 0 -1
    #1
    or fn (checkaride #0 #1 -1 -1 and empty #0)
    where #0 0 -1
    #1
    or checkleap #0 #1 1 0;

def GL mergeall
    leaps #0 1 0
    ray where #0 0 1 1 1
    ray where #0 0 -1 1 -1
    ray where #0 0 1 -1 1
    ray where #0 0 -1 -1 -1;

At a first couple glances, this looks nice!

It's nice to see the Ship back again after you took it out of your mainline larger games, and ofc the snake fits logically with it. The Cheetah (aka the Beaver for those who are into Gilman) is nice too (and much rarer than the squirrel) and the Sabre‐tooth I've never seen before — it's kinda terrifying!

A couple of notes: afaik the name snaketongue (whence iirc your shortened snake) goes back to Betza's Bent Riders article — which also mentions the ship (under the name twin tower — arguably in bad taste but acknowledged as such in the original version; I think Greg accidentally(?) removed that when he added his own footnotes).

And regarding your question at the beginning, one argument for even ranks is that otherwise a pawn reaching the middle rank has an advantage over its counterpart that can't be trivially made up for. Idk if i've seen it said this way round (maybe in the comments on H.G.'s Elven Chess) but certainly there was a proposal by Rich Hutnik that on boards with odd ranks the pawn should be able to capture straight forwards to balance that advantage (by discouraging a move to the middle rank). Ofc that hasn't stopped people, and it may well matter less than it was made out to. And indeed (other than a kind of symmetry) there's nothing in particular to suggest any advantage for even files.

It's still not clear what this means. A withdrawer captures by making a move, whilst an immobiliser stops others from making moves — the former's effect is on its own turn while the latter's is on the opponent's.

As such there's a couple of interpretations possible:

• It stops things from moving away like a withdrawer. This is just a weaker immobiliser, and is already attested in Euqorab
• It petrifies pieces that it moves away from rather than capturing them. Then the question is whether and if so when pieces can come back into play: never (as with Nemoroth's basilisk)? When the withdrawing‐petrifier moves again (leaving it able to only petrify one piece at a time)? After a larger but still fixed number of moves (turn counting, ugh)? Under some other condition? Are involuntary moves (from Swappers, shepherding pieces, Go Away!s, ⁊c.) counted? Does capturing it release pieces?

Imo the former option is not very interesting, nor necessarily well‐defined (how does it deal with knights?), while the latter is quite complex in principle and perhaps not very immobiliser‐like — though I admit the possibility of ulima‐style pieces with effects besides capture is interesting and not very well explored

I think you've asked a similar question before, and the answer (including re this case) is further down this comment thread ;)

I also have a question of my own: just to clarify, a Dark Spirit or Buddhist Spirit capturing a Deva or Teaching King, or vice versa, causes it, like other pieces, to convert to its victim? The notes clarify that, as expected, one of them would disappear, but don't make clear which one, and one could make a case imo for contageous pieces being immune to contageon themselves.

You mean how could it be described? With the new E atom it should be simple enough to do exactly one reflection: [B-E-sB] (a slight change from the regular refl. B in HG's comment) For arbitrarily many, but at least one, I think we still need the off‑board interpretation of o as the [] notation lacks arbitrary repetitions afaict. That would give something like yafoabyas(yafoabyas)B (though the sandbox seems to ignore the brackets on the second one, only allowing either one or two reflections… probably I'm doing sth wrong)

Three obvious potential improvements stand out, besides the aforementioned grammatical issues:

• The setup diagram is misleading; even though you clarify that the fore‐ and hindmost ranks are not actually part of the board, it's probably better to make that clear in the diagram too
• Similarly, using pieces to denote destination squares in the movement diagrams is extremely(!) confusing. The diagram designer does provide for using coloured circles for this purpose; consider finding out how to use that functionality
• The drop rule is not clear. You say that cannons and two soldiers start in hand and may be dropped only on resp^ly the 1^st or 3^rd rank, but even this information is easily missed and further details (is it Shōgi‐style drops? Seirawan‐style? Sth else entirely?) are completely unspecified. I'd suggest putting a note about it in the Rules section

Also a typo: your paragraph about the Soldier refers to droppable pawns.

This one?: https://www.chessvariants.com/index/listcomments.php?id=33008

I happened to be reading this thread recently so it's still freshish in my memory

I think (Siwakorn may feel free, of course, to correct me) that it means that once no more unpromoted Soldiers remain, if 64 moves pass without any captures the game is declared a draw, but a capture, rather than resetting the count, adds 16 instead.

Also I understood the Grand Continent bit to mean “Continental Chess is played widely on the Grand Continent, which is the one supercontinent of a fictional world.” [changes emphasised]

Speaking of both names and M&B, worth noting that Paulowich's Spotted Gryphon is called an Angel there, and Gilman's Nightingale is close to your F-then-W-then-DD piece, though it cannot stop on the F square (and thus makes exactly an even number of steps). The Chainsaw (and a whole class of related pieces) remains unnamed.

The classic answer was to hold a Design contest (the obvious themes in this case being Silver and/or the nr 25), but I'm not sure if we have enough people active here aþm for that to really work — istr the 2017 20th‌‐anniversary one never really went anywhere (though I suppose one could always try recruiting from other Variant fora…).

That said, a tournament would work too. Featuring games from throughout the pages' tenure…

I think what may have happened here is the same thing that seems to have happened in a number of places around the site: at some point, a bunch of files written in UTF-8 were interpreted bytewise as what I assume is Latin-1. That also explains a number of other strange things that turn up (Ben notes that several pages have e.g. ⟨²⟩ where ⟨²⟩ is expected, and some old comments (e.g.) refer to Jörg as ⟨Jörg⟩).

I note that that transformation (and, indeed the reverse) would leave ASCII characters intact, as the backup version has (hence intact links ⁊c.) but this attempt to fix it has not (hence the broken URLs spilt around and partial names (⟨盓ric van Reem⟩) ⁊c.)

EDIT: Playing about with it, it looks like it is indeed one of the 8‐bit encodings, though the ⟨€⟩ sign suggests it's not Latin-1 but one of the others. The character between “Shuffle Chess” and “Prechess” would seem to suggest it's one where ⟨€⟩ is 0x80, as that gives a ⟨、⟩, which would make sense there (it's a punctuation used to separate items in a list) — of those, Codepage 1252 (Microsoft Windows Western European) was once quite popular iirc, so it seems a likely candidate.

EDIT 2: The backup page contains the characters Z–caron ⟨Ž⟩, S–caron ⟨Š⟩, and the O–E ligature ⟨Œ⟩; of the charsets on the linked page, codepage 1252 is the only one to contain all three of those characters, so my money is on that being the right one. As such, presumably the procedure would be to save it encoded in codepage 1252 and then open it as a UTF-8 file.

EDIT 3: A quick try at doing this with Libreoffice tells me I'm right — my Chinese isn't very good but it's enough to see that it looks plausible — the notes section for example begins with a section on how to play it on one's computer (matching the Zillions file link). Unfortunately Libreoffice still leaves a couple of things garbled: it refuses to accept bytes like 0x81 (which is unassigned in codepage 1252), rather than pass them through, which in turn leaves any character encoded using it (including the aforementioned list comma ⟨、⟩) unrecovered. A correct recovery would thus need to use software which is a bit more liberal in what it accepts/emits.

The link in the introduction is broken; it should probably point to the author's translation of the Chaturanga page — note that the latter, as well as the Courier Chess page still need converting (the Shogi page oþoh seems intact — it was last edited in 2018 though so perhaps it escaped the corruption). Also is there an old backup of the Chinese page on FIDE? As it stands now it's complete nonsense. EDIT: The Wayback Machine has a copy (and the garbled version seems to have the same update stamp so it probably hadn't changed in the 14 years before conversion to its current state)

I don't see anything wrong with having pages in multiple languages here, and we do indeed have some pages in Spanish, among others. The Alphabetical Index issues queries for English pages only by default, but you can query for non‐English pages too — apparently there's only(!) 108 of them so there's no difficulty getting them to display. Though in any case the Index lacks pages for “Pages beginning with ⟨菲⟩”, for example…

I see at the bottom of that page a note saying that it was translated by Altavista's Babelfish. We should probably get rid of it,

The note does also say that one “Cherry X.Z.”, who even had an email address linked in Wayback's copy, ‘modified’ it, which may mean it has had some human input to make it sensible Chinese. But my own Chinese isn't good enough to judge the correctness/idiomaticness(?) of the original page, so I can't weigh in on it from that perspective. I'm happy to leave that up to Editorial Discretion

Having just read the book, this description is erroneous. Morley does propose the first variant givn on this page, but it is an alternative proposal, offered almost reluctantly after a digression on Knight's Tours, to the one the book is ‘about’ (though in many ways it's really a long and winding — though charming — book of Chess‐variant apologetics); the main variant in the book has only the ‘corridors’ on the sides, not the ones behind the camps. The second version offered here would seem to be apocryphal.

The corridors originate, according to Morley, as a way of giving the Rooks' pawns the ability of capturing in both directions, as the other 6 pawns can. The promotion rule is, as suggested here, that pawns can promote on the enemy back rank — pawns are given the opportunity to capture into the corridor ‘at their own risk’.

The variant as a whole is intended to expand the possibilities of the game (and counteract its being ‘played out’ — not so much between players of equal strength, as between players of potentially equal intuitive ability but differing levels of learnedness, esp. re the Opening) without making any changes to the rules or pieces, in contrast to e.g. Henry Bird's earlier proposal (referred to in the text) which introduces the Carrera compounds, as the added complexity would in his opinion be, though perhaps interesting to experts, too intimidating for lay chessplayers.

As a change, the ‘inverse Gustavian’ board (i.e. adding everything except the corners on each side) is a nice way of accomplishing that goal imo (and indeed, the Gustavian board has the opposite goal: introducing new pieces while changing the board as little as possible).

Speaking of 404's, I also get those from the What's New page, specifically the two newest links (Cubic Chess and 3D Chess 4 Cubed). Though they also have the External Link icon next to the name, so perhaps that's related.

The Google Custom Search turns up this when searching for ‘ski‐rook’: https://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/abc-chess.html

Apparently it contains a (leaping) ski‐bishop, though no actual ski‐rook. Only one I could find though. EDIT: Never mind, apparently it's just an example. And all the other usages of ski‐sliders or Pickets (and their compounds) seem to be lame. Which leaves only a game which I've had in mind but not yet got round to writing up, where a leaping‐picket+wazir promotes from a Phoenix/Waffle. And arguably (albeit failing the ‘straight line’ condition) the original GA unicorn/rhinoceros

I must admit I'm surprised these aren't more popular…

Besides the points made about your other submission, some of which apply here too, I have one further main question about this: What exactly is a ‘connection’? The mention of ‘support’ in the rules section suggests that it means being defended by a friendly piece (and the diagrams seem to support this), but it could be stated more clearly.

Also a minor question: are Kings excluded from providing ‘connections’ (as they are excluded from the effects of your other game), or is it just the own‐side pawns?

A piece moving diagonally through a cell orthogonally adjacent to a Tardis may do so through either two opposite corners of that cell, or one of the non-Tardis corners and halfway along the Tardis-bordering edge.

It took me disappointingly long to figure out how said diagonal moves into/out of the Tardises work, but I think I've got it now: for reference, a bishop starting from c4 could move souteast into the white Tardis (in its starting position as shown in the diagram) and continue along its a6–f1 diagonal; from d4 it could go southeast b6–f2 or c6–f3, able in both cases to exit to the main board's g1; from e4 the southeast move takes it either d6–f4 or e6–f5, exiting onto g2; and moving southeast from f4 it may reach g3 via the Tardis' f6 or skip that square completely. Ofc from the latter three squares there are southwestward Tardis‐crossing moves too, and likewise from other squares.

a player may move the entire Tardis […] to swap place with any completely empty 3x3 block of non-Tardis cells

I see where this comes from, though it seems the emphasised restricion may be unnecessary at least in theory; the path‐splitting rule seems like it could be unambiguously be applied recursively, and from a lore perspective Tardises (well, the TARDIS) have been known to materialise inside each other (or even inside themselves, whether at the same or different points in their own timeline) on the show. The only problematic case would be a Tardis straddling a Tardis' edge (though they've never been seen inside each other's doors either, so…).

Subdividing the original Xiang Qi board

It seems the array diagram is missing a rank :‌(

For what it's worth, I like the idea behind this game a lot, though I haven't had a chance to try it; the unusual connectivity is interesting, the moving palaces a nice addition, and the way of incorporating extra space innovative. And the Tardis is the last entry in Man and Beast, too; a suitably unusual way to finish an epic series of articles.

I use the word 'field' as a synonym for playing field or square. 'Field' has nothing to do with space in German.

The English word ‘space’ is used to refer to individual squares (or other shapes if boards are irregular) of the board. ‘Square’ is also used, as is ‘cell’ (especially in 3D) or ‘hex’ in hexagonal‐cell games. As ‘Feld’ is indeed, as Fergus rightly intuited, used for the same thing in German, it is thus the German word for space in this sense. Conversely, ‘field’ in English is rather unusual as a way of referring to spaces (i.e. squares ⁊c.)

Of course the usual sense of ‘space’ is better translated as ‘Raum’ or the like (hence e.g. Raumschach), but that sense is not what's meant here

This reads better, but it seems to be stating the obvious

My reading of the German suggests that ‘Farbtransfer’ — i.e. ‘Colour Transfer’ — is being use in a slightly more technical sense to refer to a particular kind of event (cf. e.g. ‘Bishop Conversion’ due to Carlos Cetina, which is more specific than simply converting bishops by some arbitrary means); after all, neither ‘Farbtransfer’ nor ‘colour transfer’ is an everyday word or phrase. And since the German also does not mention possibility (*‘dann muss ein Farbtransfer stattfinden können’) I'd probably translate it as your tautological‐looking one, but with ‘Colour Transfer’ capitalised

Could a Bishop move from d1 to e8 along the path d1-c2-d4/4-b5-c6-d7-e8?

Assuming ‘d4’ is a typo for ‘a4’, then my reading of the rules agrees that it could indeed take this path, or instead a path d1–e2–f3–g4–5–g6–f7–e8.

The position on the Switches must be clear. Either field 4 or field a4 [but not both; analogously for 5/h5] must be occupied

In other words, a piece moving onto the switch must choose on the turn that it gets there which squares it can move off onto? And so e.g. a rook can checkmate a king on h8 from h1, h2, h3, or h4, but not h5 or 5?

If we're talking prior usage, it's worth mentioning that Valkyrie has at least three distinct usages already: A queen that can also relocate friendly pieces, Bishop capturing as Queen, and a 3D‐specific piece moving as Rook or jumping two steps on either kind of diagonal. Conversely Heroine (albeit perhaps due to potential Drug associations) is afaict only used by Gilman for a Hex‐prism‐specific compound

Fwiw, Gilman also uses Hero on that last page, and there's also a Hero in Hero Chess. Surprisingly, Gilman seems to lack names for the two pieces under discussion (Knight+Chatelaine/Primate, to use his terminology) though. I suppose one could suggest Catholicos for BWN, as a rank above cardinal that starts with Ca‐ (for the usual extrapolations: Zetholicos ⁊c), but besides the long and awkward Archchancellor (note the double ⟨ch⟩) idk what he'd've used for the RFN

Pythia seems to be unused (understandably, given its relative obscurity); arguably it falls afoul of Fergus' objection to multiple ‘popesses’, as there was only one Pythia at a time, but as Jean‐Louis notes, if we can have two Sissas…

Imo Popess feels a bit awkward as a word, and I share Jean‐Louis' reservations re unnecessary loanwords; Pythia, Valkyrie, Heroine, and Baroness all sound fine to me

Perhaps that's where Daniil Frolov got it from?

I've found a few other uses since writing this page (including one in JWB's Meta‐Chess) but haven't yet decided to update it; perhaps some time soon

Which of the two possible stepping Fortnights do you mean?

• The one taking one each of wazir, ferz, and viceroy steps? Given that Gilman starts from the various bent/crooked pieces which only have two kinds of step, this is probably a bit out of scope (corkscrew pieces with one kind of step aside).
• The one taking three Ferz steps, two in one direction and one at 60° (dual to the hex Shearwater)? That'd match the two‐of‐one‐and‐one‐of‐the‐other pattern of the Falcon, and arguably as a Shearwater extrapolation could be nameworthy (I'd've suggested Fulmar, a family of birds related to shearwaters beginning with the F of fortnight as shearwater begins with the S of sennight, but it's already taken (albeit with unclear etymology) for Zephyr+Lama; perhaps Petrel, the group including the fulmars and still beginning with a labial consonant, would suit it?), but presumably he either didn't consider two diagonal directions different enough without the AltOrth‐ness, or it just didn't occur to him. And there are also Nonstandard Diagonals at small enough angles (35°) for more Falcon‐like pieces there too

For a stepping‐Trison component I'd probably choose the former, but individually both are interesting enough imo. There's still a few bird‐of‐prey names unused I think so if one were keen to name them in Gilmanesque fashion all that'd remain would be finding a game to use them in…