Piececlopedia: Querquisite

Historical notes

The Querquisite was invented by J. E. H. Creed in 1947. It is used both in chess problems and in chess variants. It was rediscovered as an unnamed piece by Bruce Zimov in 1973 for the chess variant Lumberjack, as Odysseus by H. Schmid around 1988, as an unnamed piece by Karl Scherer for Morph Chess, and as Zelig by Stan Druben for M-Chess and Zelig Chess.

It was recovered under its original name by Abdul-Rahman Sibahi in 2007 and featured in Querquisite Chess.

Movement

The Querquisite's move depends on its position of on the board; it is determined by the file where it stands. Changing the file, the Querquisite changes its moves accordingly.

It moves

• as a rook on files a and h
• as a knight on files b and g
• as a bishop on files c and f
• as a queen on file d
• as a non-royal king on file e

Lumberjack features a royal Querquisite in addition to seven non royal ones, in Morph Chess all Querquisites on the e file are royal. In Zelig Chess the number of Querquisites moving as a rook is limited by additional rules.

Tiraspol Chess features divergent pieces moving as the nominal piece and capturing as Querquisites.

Extensions to lager boards, e. g., using Grand Chess, are obvious.

Physical Representation

Usually a checker or a go stone is used to represent the Querquisite on the chess board. For a Lumberjack (royal Querquisite) a stack of two checkers can be used.

Games with the Querquisite

Lumberjack by Bruce Zimove, 1973

Morph Chess (Zillion of Games) by Karl Scherer, 2000

M-Chess by Stan Druben, 2001

Zelig Chess by Stan Druben, 2001

Tiraspol Chess by Max K. (Candle), 2019

Reference

Two's Company, an article by Stephen Emmerson in Variant Chess, recalling the Querquisite (1998).

Note

This description replaces an older description of the Zelig written by Stan Druben and Peter Spicer 2001-2003.

This is an item in the Piececlopedia: an overview of different (fairy) chess pieces.

Last revised by Jörg Knappen.