Comments by nelk114

My interpretation was that the forward‐only thing was just a pragmatic way of ensuring offensive play, sort of like a primitive cousin of the jeu forcé. Much in the same way as Draughts/Checkers has FO pieces.

with D2 rather than D7 that rises to 159

I'm thinking that this is because there is not a lot of experience in games with jokers.

At least in my case that's very much the reason; in principle the dicussion is very interesting (especially since a game I've been thinking about would involve a closely‐related, if potentially even more powerful (though less apparently‐random) piece)

My impression is that jokers are a bit like Querquisites and Smess/Ivory‐Tower pieces, in that they depart substantially enough from normal Chess dynamics that they'd take a good bit of learning to handle. And in their particular case, the art of dealing with them is in part (principally?) the fact that they reduce the value of strong pieces, especially if well placed: you can't freely move the queen if there's a joker ready to copy its move while still being worth (on average, presumed — though of course this ‘chilling’ effect increases its value correspondingly to the powerful pieces on the board) less.

I'd be interested to see how Jokers handle in games with (a small number of) really powerful pieces. I'd almost predict that capturing the jokers to free the power pieces (with maybe some judicious moves by the latter in between either while the J is still hidden in the setup position, or to give check) would be an important middle‐game theme.

But in any case for now you're probably one of the people here with most experience with the J :‌)

It could have been made clearer, but it's not so difficult to find: locusts spawn in the square vacated by a moving king, or result from the demotion of a capturing Leo

I think the use of ‘leaping’ where the other pawns simply ‘move’ suggests that they do, in fact, leap (making your diagram accurate)

One last detail: traditionally what you've put under Movement in the rules section is what the Pieces section is intended for. Whether you want to append it to that section as is or interleave it with the images is up to you.

Once that's done, this looks otherwise ready for publication

The term ‘Lama’ he uses for that is a religious title (incl., f.ex., the Dalai Lama); as best as I can tell the word is totally unrelated

face blowing a raspberry

That's also a good use of the extended‐ASCII range: ⟨:‌Þ⟩ (as opposed to the playful ⟨:‌P⟩)

Can confirm it's not showing up; the ID seems to be requesting /graphics.gif (which of course does not exist) rather than /graphics.dir/alfaeriemisc/compounds/wzebrawazir.gif as expected

4D has at least two more symmetrical tilings: Xyrixa‐prism (a line of boards each of which has the same topology as Tetrahedral Chess or OctHex), as well as one that continues the Hex–Xyrixa–??? line which I've wondered about for a while but have never looked into in enough detail. There might also be one or two more in the class of the following.

There is also one more 3D one that Charles never explored (and noöne else seems to have used either), the bitruncated cubic honeycomb. Which corresponds to the other close‐packing of spheres that the Xyrixa geometry doesn't cover.

Unfortunately Charles hasn't been seen here since 2016, so even if he were interested in 4D (which he stated several times that he wasn't) it's unlikely that he'll do much on that front. And even there, the Hybrid Diagonal stuff is already kind of pushed into more‐or‐less expansion article territory.

If you're really interested, of course, you can devise some names yourself :‌)

(Let's hope we never need a Spider-Elephant compound...)

Since Spider is another name for the Alfil-Dabbabah compound, it's not very likely to happen.

But with Spider also in (sparse) use for the Manticore, it's not totally out of the question…

the Deception Chess has removed everything but the title

That's odd; it shows up fine for me

(the gist of it is that each piece has a secret identity (chosen by the owning player) and on your move you can change a still‐disguised piece into its secret counterpart. Pieces have their secret identity revealed on capture, and the secret king is the one that has to be checkmated/captured)

I think you mean more flattened

I'd meant less horizontally flattened, i.e. wider, but yes making it less tall achieves the same and it does look better that way

might seem unrealistic in a composite

I imagine with semi‐abstract iconography like this people tend to be willing (I know I am) to suspend their disbelief a little :‌)

The big omission I see: can an Immortal capture on the move it's brought in with?

While bringing them into the game players have to make sure that they are moved at a safe distance from both Kings, so that no King will be in check

Is this an extra rule? Ensuring your own king won't be in check makes sense, but you've nowhere else suggested that it would be a bad idea to potentially check the opposing king, unless this is supposed to tacitly forbid that

I am not sure if anybody has ever tried before to use chess pieces with hidden identities

The Disguised Pieces tag has a couple games that might be similar; These two probably come closest, though neither goes quite as far as your Immortals

This reasoning seems sound to me

Other (minor) advantages include the usual visual trope (the Pokémon Girafarig comes to mind) that the forward‐facing head is more prominent (the Ram is both bigger than and in front of the Ox), and (super minor, but a nice touch) that the positions of the larger and smaller heads matches that of the original Knight–Camel image (which, incidentally, is used on several (all?) pages featuring the Pushme–Pullyu, not just here)

Would it be worth trying a slightly less flattened Ram? Probably due to the relative roundnesses, it seems to suffer that scaling more than the Ox does

Note that Betza's Twin Tower moves outward forward or backward; i.e. it's the same piece as Jean‐Louis' Ship, and thus shouldn't be able to reach the sW squares at all.

Incidentally, the Twin Tower paragraph has a dangling footnote reference; Greg's edits effaced the original footnote (a jokingly cynical take on World Trade Centre merchandise). Is it worth restoring that (It's probably still on the Internet Archive somewhere), or better to simply remove the footnote reference?

Other possibilities include replacing one side or the other with a Querquisite ((al) or (ar))

By which I assume you mean Quintessence? ;‌)

I'm among those who are not so big on the leaping riders, but I'll admit these are pretty cool. And of course sliding analogues (R or B plus chiral qK) are also possible

I see, I missed it because it's under the heading of Promotion rather than grouped with the description of the (unpromoted) Princess' move. I'd recommend grouping it with the latter; seems to me people are likelier to find it there

‘Mandatory promotion’ simply means deferring promotion isn't allowed, correct?

Have you tested with the (lack of) pawn‐drop‐checkmate rule? Seems to me there'd be a reason (i.e. pawn‐drop checkmates being distastefully frequent) for that to be in Shōgi, and whilst I may be wrong it doesn't look like this game differs so much that that reason would become invalid

I made a couple of minor edits for grammar (and in one case formatting); more could in principle be done but I prefer to be conservative with all but the most egregious things. Please check to see if there's any of the edits that you take issue with (I'd imagine not), and if they're OK with you I'll release it — I think the rules themselves are clearly enough stated

With apologies for taking so long :‌) (life got a bit busy for a moment there)

Something like this? Noting that the bishop would threaten its own king (without checkmating the opponent) if it took the rook, neither side has any valid moves.

Though there seems little reason to judge that differently from a win for the last to move

‘Marine’ here is a problemist usage; most of these names do seem to be standard for these pieces in the Problem world (though my go‐to source is in German so there may be differences). ‘Prawn’ for Marine Pawn differs from German usage of ‘Matelot’, or Sailor, but since I don't immediately find any English‐language references to Marine pieces that name the Pawn analogue I'm willing to let it stand.

I'll do a more thorough check later but I don't expect it'll get in the way of publishing this

Hmmm, there doesn't seem to be any attribution on that (unless it's missing because I'm on Desktop); shame really, nice to be able to attribute things where due. I'll definitely mention it though (and might be worth the Chess+ link as well (I'd look for it myself but the site seems to lack a search facility), if only for the attribution — and the fact that ‘Test’ is not the most inspiring name for a game!)

ChessCraft

I'd been wondering where you were getting all the variants from (especially since you attribute them to others) that you've been posting IDs for :‌)

why you want to expand xBetza

As with Bob, really my answer is (at the moment) that I don't; it works well enough for what it does (as H.G. has elaborated on). More that we were discussing a previous commenter's proposal to extend it using non‐ASCII.

I'd still be tempted to hold out a degree of openness for exactly the purpose I mentioned: 3D (let alone 4D) or unusual (hyperbolic, say — I've been musing over an actual Regular Octagonal Chess to match Frolov's approximation) boards where the existing letters would all apply but more would be necessary to cover the extra moves. Though one might equally argue that at that point it's far enough from the familiar that Betza is somewhat out of its depth anyway.

And while hexagonal boards may be in scope for the ID, I imagine 3D and hyperbolic boards are far from it ;‌)

you'd (apparently) lean toward using ß for Sexton, while I'd use it for Switchback

We're technically not contradicting each other; I was using capital ⟨ẞ⟩, as is usual for atoms, whereas Switchback, whilst really something that XBetza would tend to spell out explicitly, is definitely small ⟨ß⟩ material

under my suggestion, I could define Þ to represent the Rose's movement path (possibly with a line something like def Þ = qN -- not just a character replacement, but a definition of a movement path).

Strictly speaking a path‐and‐mode model is not quite what XBetza does; rather it decribes moves in stages.

Which is, to be fair, in line with how Betza thought; the ‘Ferz‐then‐Cannon’ of his Bent Riders article comes easily to XBetza whereas a path‐and‐mode description thereof is cumbersome at best. Conversely path‐and‐mode describes the contrasted ‘Bent Cannon’ much more naturally.

I may be wrong, but trying to get XBetza to manipulate a Rose path in that way once it's been defined might be more convoluted than it appears

Do you have a link for that? Would definitely be good info to have here

@Bob: No doubt you're at least the first person to deploy it using Gilman's name :‌) (even if that's an even more trivial place in history ;‌P)

I assume I'd added the tag on account of the ‘Minimal Not-Particularly-New Chess’ subvariant described some way down the page, which basically only adds the Cardinal to the usual array and would thus qualify.

It's not entirely clear what to do about pages describing multiple games; do we tag it if anything on the page qualifies, or only if they all do? Or, in cases like this, only if it's the main game on a page? I'm happy to remove the tag if we prefer (either of) the latter two

should [arbitrary XBetza move footprints as blastZone] have an absolute orientation, or be relative to the move of the burning piece? […] you could not specify an Advancer with [absolute directions]

But surely the advancer doesn't have a burning move? But rather an extension of its movement to capture on the next square? After all, passive burning is out of the question for an advancer (unless it were to remember its orientation)

Or have I misunderstood how blastZone works? (And also, now that I'm rereading the IDiag page, does the burn spell act only on pieces landing next to the spellcaster, or also on pieces it lands next to? A strict reading of the text implies the former plus a need for a matching blastZone, but this seems… an unusual rule, if consistent with modern Tenjiku)

cc (or, indeed, :) looks like it'd make sense

H.G. had mentioned Superchess

Odd. It works for me in the full comments listing but not in isolation.

Also, the AI capitulates immediately as the game begins without Kings on the board.

his chess variant was not even that great

The distinction there is probably not so much one of quality as of priority; it's one of the earliest enlargements of Shatranj (behind Grant Acedrex) that did more than add one, maybe two, pairs of pieces to the board.

Since you've done the research, would you care to do the honours of writing up a page?

If not I'll probably pick it up eventually (unless someone else beats me to it), but since I don't own a copy of your book I'd probably miss something.

The difficulties in Fr would be that "knight" is translated by "chevalier" in a general context and by "cavalier" (meaning a horse rider) in the context of chess. So a CV having Knight, Cavalier and Chevalier, will be difficult to translate in French. Or a CV having a Tower and a Rook, both being "Tour". A CV having a Lady, would be translated as "Demoiselle", as "Dame" is already the word for Queen. Etc.

In general, this is true, yes; my previous comment was referring specifically to Bigorra (and by extension the rest of the games in its family) which doesn't have such conflicts.

The difficulties with translating to French are mainly due to French being one of the main sources for Modern English

I'd say the difficulty is a little subtler: English, due to both its Lingua Franca status and its extensive acquisition of loanwords, simply has a lot of words in certain semantic domains that mean either the same or very similar things. Which is obvious when, as with French, there are actual clashes, but even in Russian I'd be a little surprised (perhaps @Lev can enlighten us?) if it had three different words for Knight/Cavalier/Chevalier.

For comparison, German might get away with that triplet using both ‘Knecht’ and ‘Ritter’, (cognate to ‘Knight’ and ‘Rider’ respectively, and with (I think) slightly different connotations), but even then only because the Chess Knight is unrelatedly named ‘Springer’ — it can thus even spare a word for ‘Horse’ (‘Pferd’ — or even ‘Ross’ if necessary, though that'd be a bit like naming two pieces ‘Horse’ and ‘Steed’ in English). It would have just as much trouble as French with ‘Rook’/‘Tower’ (both ‘Turm’), though.

At some point, creative license would no doubt become necessary.

Some English speakers would call [Cardinal and Marshall] Archbishop and Chancellor or Princess and Empress

And some would call the Amazon Ace or Terror. Yes, English CV nomenclature is a mess.

One might argue that's an accident of history: several people independently reinventing the same pieces under different names before any one convention got established. There's no reason a priori to replicate that in translation (this being the ‘opportunity’ I referred to).

I now set up a 3-vs-1 page that can be preconfigured in the same way as the existing 2-vs-1 page

I've added a link to that, plus a bit more of your detailed explanation (with the terms clarified — hopefully correctly — as they're as yet far from established terminology)

The mFcW is potent (it can switch its attack from c1 to a1 by moving from c2 to b1), and can thus in principle force mate together with any minor

I'm lightly torn on whether to include this information on the page too; it's not the main subject of the page but it's interesting and it'd be a shame to have it hidden away in a comment

You're missing a link to Interdependent Chess

It does have a link earlier in the page; I had made a conscious decision not to duplicate links (the two Schwalbe glossary links being to different portions of the document), though I don't feel strongly about that if you feel it's better to link it twice

I left a comment on that page about the name of Guardian being used for the Berolina Steward in Lt. Obert's Decimal Chess from the 1870's

I'd completely forgotten about that, especially since it's not the main subject of the page; I've added a mention thereof (though CECV gives the date as 1880, which is what I've put down)

In Decimal Chess, Obert gave his Guardian a double move

The relevance of double moves for pawnlike pieces such as steward and guardian had gone completely over my head; it's late now but I'll make sure to double(!) check when I next get time to do so what the rules are in the various games (though I expect it'll be double moves only if they're pawn replacements)

The problem of names of the piece, which is already an issue in English, may become a problem with other languages

Yeah piece nomenclature would definitely be the hardest part of this; as H.G. notes, there'll be some precedent in whatever exesting literature on CVs there is in a given target language, but that will almost certainly be limited in scope for most languages compared to what we have here (even, say, Die Schwalbe's relatively extensive glossary has some, from a variantist point of view, arguably major omissions). And as you say there's a certain amount of conflicting usage between languages that makes things less than straightforward.

Of course, that cuts both ways; would‐be translators have an opportunity (if they do their research appropriately) to avoid making quite as much of a mess of naming as we have in English :‌) Even if we don't go as far as attempting the likely‐futile task of trying to replicate the likes of Man and Beast in, say, French.

And depending on the pages Lev is interested in translating it may not be much of an issue at all; plenty of games on these pages use only the Orthodox sextet

If I had to translate Bigorra with its more than 30 different pieces, I may come to some difficulties

Might be an interesting exercise in itself, to see how feasible such a task would be. And whilst i don't know the established French names (assuming there are any) for Cardinal/Marshall/Amazon, most of the remaining pieces (with the exception of the Direwolf and maybe the Soldier) ought to be easily translated word‐for‐word. For Russian we might have to pay more attention to the Elephant and Ship (we could always take precedent from English and go with ‘Филь’ for the former at least), and Italian/Spanish/German might want something more distinct from ‘dame’ than ‘duchess’, but these are exceptions really.

I'm sure someone will come up with it within the hour

Hardly on time, but the Griffin+Rhino is Gilman's Gorgon, also used under that name by Daniil Frolov

But 8x8 is the largest square board where they manage that

Noted

The problem for having something similar for 3-vs-1 is not technical, but the use case

The Stewards being the exception proving the rule :‌)

Page descriptions can be edited from the editors' Edit Links page ([links]).

Ok, I've done that now; I'd spotted that page but wasn't sure it was usable for updating links as well as adding new ones (it's not terribly extensively documented(!)) and I'm still not sure I can intuit the correct set of features just from looking at it. Maybe something to test in future

"capturing" in the paragraph with my name in it is misspelled

Well spotted :‌) something was bound to get through (I'm lightly surprised I'm not spotting more to be honest)

UCC may be of interest, regarding your Steward article

Perhaps once it's ready and published ;‌) Little sense in linking out to a page noöne can (yet) officially access

The main problem here is that I don't think anyone among the editorship understands Russian (I can speak German and Spanish, I presume H.G. speaks Dutch, and Jean‐Louis, while not presently an editor, would be able to help with French, but as far as I'm aware that's about it), so it would be difficult to be confident in the quality of such a translation (though I suppose there are other Russian speakers on this forum, who might be better placed to help in this regard?).

That said, in principle I'm all for having more Russian‐language (or any other non‐English) pages, so if we can find a way to make this work by all means :‌)

OK so looking at the page as it stands, I think I can make out most of the rules, so in that sense it at least more‐or‐less meets the minimum criteria for publishing. Nevertheless I feel it could be profitably edited to make the flow of information clearer. A couple of specifics:

• ‘In a row’ (Pieces section, Paragraph 1) doesn't imply adjacency in English; I would consider all the black pieces in each Diagram except the g7 knight to be in a row. ‘Adjacent’ would be more precise, or you could say explicitly that this applies even if there are no empty spaces between them, as long as there is one behind them
• The descriptions of the pieces make no distinctions between rules (e.g. “moves & checks as in chess, unobstructed diagonal line”) and incidental observable properties (“can't capture a piece which stands on the edge of the board”); in general it's more useful to separate these out clearly — the latter is perfect Notes section material
• It might be clearer to describe the details of the Ranging moves (and captures) outwith the individual piece sections, all in one go; it might even be sufficient to just describe how their captures differ from the orthodox ones (e.g. “Bishop, Rook, and Queen move and give check as in normal Chess, but capture differently as follows:” followed by the list of applicable rules).
• You note that capturing is optional for the knight; is it possible for it to take one potential victim but not both? The Example clarifies that it can capture even if the other square it passes through contains a Friendly piece, but that might be worth making textually explicit too
• Can a king castle if it's in check from a piece it would capture by castling? e.g. White Ke1,Ra1/Black Rd1? A literal reading says no, but it could be made more explicit either way
• The requirement for a space between pieces to be captured by castling is inconsistent with the lack of such a requirement for all other pieces; why?
• The distinction between giving check and winning by capture, whilst as you say shared with Atomic, I find very strange (in both games); saying that a threat of capture is also check would lead to entirely equivalent outcomes. But with Atomic as a precedent I guess this isn't in itself really a blocker for publication

Given its stated purpose, this is a charming little game! I'm quite partial to these kinds of training game/exercise.

I'm taking the non‐private status to mean you're happy to have this published, and the page seems to me good enough that I'm happy to do so

This should be mostly (with one exception near the bottom) ready to publish, but I'd appreciate one or two of the other editors (and/or anyone else) taking a look to see if I've missed anything.

The Related Pieces subsection is not something that's usually in Piececlopedia pages, and I'm not 100% sure whether it's considered properly within scope; on the other hand it seems reasonable to put this information somewhere, and since none of the pieces there discussed have seen wide enough use to qualify for their own Piececlopedia enties… (And my Manticore page also features a paragraph to that effect, just not marked off as such with a heading)

@H.G.:

I'd assumed you might have a measurement of the Steward's value somewhere but a quick search of the Comments doesn't turn anything up; does such a measurement exist, or shall I leave out the bit about its value? (or can I just use one of the formulas? the N‐square leaper one or ⅔F+⅓W or the like?)

@Fergus:

This has ended up without a description as I submitted the form in a rush due to some apparently bugged aspects of both logging in and the Submission form (I might describe those further in another comment); the metadata editing form I now have access to was very useful for setting this to be a Piececlopedia page and correctly assigning attribution, but it seems (and I think this has been noted before) it lacks a field for adjusting the Description (as opposed from the, distinct, What's New text); is there any way for me to do this?

*I couldn't figure out a way to include both curved slides in one XBetza code. I'm not sure that one even exists.

At least for the non‐bracket notation, z and q should have that effect (though I haven't at this point checked whether it holds there aþm); it seems not to work for the Bracket notation though — probably something for H.G.'s attention

As it stands now, no single piece is capable of delivering checkmate with the help of its own King.

This note seems to refer to the 'original'.

On an individual‐piece basis this applies here too; it takes at least three (perhaps even four) pieces (including the king) to deliver, let alone force, checkmate.

This should be less of a concern here though: the Conquer rule means that the total material stays the same, so there are no issues with both sides forcing a lack of sufficient mating material or suchlike (and the Knights give — albeit limited — control over the binding of captured pieces).

if only the AI plays, the variant always leads to checkmate or one side resigns

I think this is the first game I've seen where the Interactive Diagram does anything besides draw by repetition! Hardly a proof of winnability, but at least reasonably persuasive.

Since the statement of the rules seems to me clear, I've now published this

Would it be worth someone adding an explanation of planar moves to this page? As it stands it certainly is a particularly blatant relic of a time when editorial standards here were somewhat(!) laxer.

your email address leads me to think it is not real

It is in fact real, albeit a play on an earlier practice of providing false email addresses before websites started to insist on verifying them. So should you still wish to send me those I can receive them there. Or if you prefer a realer‐looking one, perhaps [my username]@disroot.org (which tbf is also less of a pain for me to access over tor). Though I agree I have scant programming experience and yet scanter web‐design experience, so at least at this point I don't feel too strongly either way.

Getting a newer nicer set of email addresses (associated with mỹ own domain) remains on the to‐do list.

There's so much confusion surrounding the names for [Gryphon and Rhino] that I'm on the verge of just calling them Merv and Fred. (I'm not entirely kidding.)

And all that because Murray mistook the latter's move description and doomed it to periodic reinvention… Could be worse; they could have as many different names as the RN and BN

De facto this proposal to name the W-then-B a Manticore […] turned out to be a bust; everyone using that piece seems to use a Rhino to represent it. […] Better switch to calling it Rhino…

Whilst as Fergus notes this is not quite true, I would be very tempted to redress the Piececlopedia page to have Rhino as the main name if and when I get around to updating it (I have a file of notes sitting around but have yet to actually do the redraft). The issue I originally noted of the name clash with (another existing page)[/piececlopedia.dir/rhino.html] persists, but it would hardly be unique in that respect.

Though oddly enough, even Rhino as a name seems to only have really taken off after Manticore had established a (however small) presence. It's almost a shame I only read Meta‐Chess after writing that page; JWB calls it a ‘Hydra’, which would have been arguably near‐ideal

And as for graphical representations, I remain partial to Alfaerie's four‐bishops icon used e.g. in the Piececlopedia page: suggestive and devoid of naming controversy :‌)

Aardvark

A nice choice :‌)

the "Overtaker R" on that list is the Chariot (attributed to QuangTrung).

That might be a reference that's possible to track down, though Quang Trung does have a rather large set of ‘editions’ with differences even among identically‐named pieces iirc. Perhaps one to look back up one of these days

Strictly speaking, Mojibake refers not to an encoding but to the effect of a mismatch between (writer's and reader's) encodings.

What had happened to this page, as well as many others (incl. several of Gilman's, f.ex.) is the same that had happened to this page (cf. the comments); it should be fixable by the same means: converting from UTF-8 to Windows-1252.

Also yes, the leftmost number in the Finch diagram should definitely be a 3

In existing games such as Tai Shogi or Maka Dai Dai Shogi, these peices are placed on the respective edges. I tend to disagree with this, since it basically cripples the forward diagonal moves.

The counterargument

Asymmetrical pieces deserve rather more exposure imo :‌)

A quick test w/ the ID suggests ꝥ the lovers are the (absolute) royalty

That's… oddly disconcerting, at least at first. But very cool

Re

Do you take notes on these things, or something? :D

I'm actually a really atrocious note‐taker — never learned to do it and never found much need; I have a good memory and that's easier to look up that written notes. That plus the search engine(s), having been here 10+ years at this point iirc (active for nearly 10), and in Gilman's case the fact that for all its density his stuff's actually pretty well organised once you get the hang of it, is quite plenty to build up a bit of context

Ofc the cute ‘Infanta de Castille’ pun does actually make that an unusually mnemonic name for the RA, even by Gilman standards; I always found ‘Inquisitor’ the harder one to remember

This is a really rather pleasant‐looking piece mix :‌) And an unusually ungimmicky (promotions aside — though in their way elegant too, particularly in the little detail that a promoted pawn needs at least two more moves to promote further) use of the Frog

Unfortunately, only three Frogs per game can promote to Tsarevnas

This is an additional rule? It's probably just me but the way it's positioned in the article makes it seems as if it should be derivable from the other rules…

In any case, I take it that means that a frog that reaches the far rank while there's already a Tsarevna on the board (or there have already been 3) simply remains as it is?

@Bob:

Peter Aronson almost went there, but decided to add the fD move too; as it stands the ‘Silverfearful’ appears only in a couple of obscure Gilman Shōgi variants as a promotee

@J‐L:

I didn't get the idiom either when I first encountered it in Aronson's write‐up (linked above), and haven't seen it anywhere else in the wild; apparently it goes back to Southeast‐Asian cultures, where white elephants were considered sacred, but receiving one could therefore ruin you as you had to maintain it but couldn't e.g. put it to work

How does the promoted princess move?

Is the knight component of the empress western‐ or chinese‐style?

Does the river have any effect other than enhancing pawns upon crossing?

As Bob notes, Badger exists but apparently only on the obscure end of piece names: Taikyoku has at least one kind, as does Man and Beast 20. Ofc since Taikyoku is in any case loose with its naming and Gilman's Badger is Hex‐prism‐exclusive so no problem there, and it's nicely mnemonic.

Likewise, Ram has some prior use, not only as the Advancer but also in a couple places as the Siege device, as well as in H.G.'s Megalomachy; since these are typically square‐board pieces it's perhaps a little more contentious.

Rat seems pretty much unused, if perhaps an odd animal to associate with rooklike moves

Why not Infanta and Inquisitor for RA/BD? The latter is alas subject to a collision with Bob's name for another piece (which might suggest retaining Bede; it's not great, being a name, but it's at least suggestive) with a superset of its move, but Infanta is otherwise unused.

Gilman suggests (in Diverging Further iirc) Dragoon for Derzhanski's Drake

@Bob: Begum at least is a preëxisting term, though distinguishing it from other aristocratic titles could ofc be tricky

EDIT: I didn't see this thread had been continued elsewhere

The authentic arabic plural of dabbāba is apparently dabbābāt. But English doesn't usually bother preserving Arabic plurals so Dabbabas is perfectly fine and will be more widely understood

This was in fact the basis of an earlier Gilman name for the Newt/Astra: since it was in the centre of the Rose's circle, he called it a Rosette (and correspondingly he had names for the centres of other oblique roses).

Fwiw he calls the q[FD] (not valid XBetza, but valid original Betza as per one of the Really Big Board pages) a (curved) Alpaca.

To every second space (read more attentively)

‘Every other space’ means the same thing in English

There’re many hippogonal movers, pieces that ride orthogonally or diagonally; what if there’ll be pieces who ride hexagonally?

It's certainly an interesting way of describing the Hexmaster (previously described by Gilman as the admittedly uninspiringly‐named Short‐Switchback Rhino [EDIT: actually it's not quite the same piece; this one lacks the main‐orthogonal W step]), if geometrically a strange one.

[the Hexmaster's] trajectory is really like DNA chain

In a very different way from the Helical Bishop aka Zigzag Bishop (as named by Fergus and Betza respectively). I don't think anyone's ever combined the two ideas, though at that point we start reaching the limit of reasonable move complexity (and a full cycle needs a Really Big Board)

Axeman (also Halberd) is Charles Gilman’s Caddied Pawn

Strictly speaking Gilman's Caddied Pawn can only make the forwardmost captures (per his usual definition of FO). I suppose this'd be a Supercaddied pawn? It's not really clear given that the super‐ prefix normally affects the noncapturing pawn component too

Also whilst I apprectiate the attempt, using the name Aanca for the t[FR], while historically more accurate, turns out to be a bit confusing after it was associated with the t[WB] for so long. I'm all for avoiding it in the latter context, but in that case it's probably better to just avoid it altogether imo.

However, [the Astra's] shining debut is still not happened...

Well, the piece itself has turned up before, in a couple of minor Gilmans; it's the Newt there, following Problemist usage (extrapolating Frog)

ranks and files will sometimes border each other along a common edge.

This is common among non‐flat spaces; most multiplayer square‐cell boards have the same property (indeed some are effectively on cube surfaces, giving exactly the same effect seen here), as does the board of my Spherical Corner Chess.

I agree with Ben here; especially given that we have Tags for making the finer distinctions, it'd make sense to keep categories boader.

Your Diff-PieceRules suggestion would cover all of these adequately imo. And if we deem it useful we can always have Promotion:DiffPawns; Promotion:ByCapture; ⁊c tags (or Rules:[such]). Indeed we already have Fusion, Fission, and a couple of Promotion‐related tags

Congratulations indeed!

It is indeed a nice page, and about time we had an accurate description here without having to dig through comments!

I was wondering about the decision to keep the literal translations of the Spanish piece names rather than going with the animals (real or mythical) that they actually meant (not only per the illustrations but also per the textual descriptions), as per the translation notes on your own page. I.e. Aanca ≡ Roc, Cocatriz ≡ Crocodile, and Unicorn ≡ Rhino.

Also actual modern Spanish would have ‘Gran Ajedrez’, not ‘Grande’; it's one of a handful of apocopic forms used when preceding a noun.

I think this makes the first time I've seen Gilman's Caddied Pawn (your Axeman) in actual use :‌)

This would ofc be equally interesting with more different pawns on a larger variant

(and as for the name, I don't necessarily disagree about the ‘aka’, but either suggested name is fine afaict — and it's less verbose than some of the other games on these pages)

See also Gilman's Fiancé(e) (and ofc the matching Widow(er) and Comedian/‐ienne); same logic, slightly further along in the relationship (presumably to avoid his slightly more narrowly‐defined boy‐/girl‐ prefixes)

I only just noticed it reading the card, but it's true of the page as well: you seem to have the Gryffon and Rhino the opposite way round from the conventional usage

I finally tracked down where first I found this piece proposed: A CV subreddit thread proposing it (and its inverse) among several others. The name ‘Nabber’ is not terribly inspiring though (and confusingly similar to the proposed names for the other related pieces). And it turns out to have the mFmAcWcD you asked about too, though again ‘Stuffer’ is perhaps not the greatest of name choices

@Jean‐Louis:

I wasn't necessarily meaning to promote the usage of ‘aanca’ to mean anything nowadays that we have more‐or‐less arrived at a concensus on what to call the Gryphon and Manticore/Rhino. More that that name was already associated with the four‐bishops icon and (presumably due to the very confusion that ‘aanca’ brings) Bob had misinterpreted it.

@Bob:

Indeed, Panda is W then DD. F then AA is called Bear by Gilman (M&B6) but idk if anyone else has taken that on and that name can also, as you've noted, refer to the Squirrel. Though the slip‐bishop seems less popular generally and idk if anyone has an alternative name for it either.

As far as the piececlopedia, first on my list is the Steward. The 4:2 leaper and now the panda are also on my radar, though it may be a little while before I can motivate myself to write even the Steward one :‌)

And fwiw, I'm quite fond of the four‐rooks and four‐bishops Gryphon and Manticore, but in any case they don't really qualify as ‘animal’ pieces so if you do include them there's probably a better choice of page