Comments by CharlesGilman
One idea that occurred to me was to concentrate on the warhead and helmsman combinations and their components so that I could view the three-way combinations as trident++ambush, trident++nonchalant, European+helmsman, and warhead+helmsman. These might be termed triamb, trinon, eurhel, and warhel for short. It did however then occur to me that eurofighter would be illogical as it stresses the European component of the trident component and it would be more consistent to term it trihel. This would also have the advantage that eurofighter as an actual weapon has been renamed typhoon, which is also the name of an existing Chess variant. It would then be logical for patient, penitent, impenitent, and impatient to be renamed euramb, eurnon, waramb, and warnon. I would be interested to know what other people think.
¹a British political party routinely embarrassed by racist and/or sexist comments by its activists
²in which he claims women are inherently disadvantaged, as many with his attitudes do
³as also used by servicemen who have just shot an obnoxious superior in their own regiment
- 0 - 7 - 1 - - - 6 - - * - - 2 - - - 5 - 3 - 4 -I then added that colourswitching Curved alternators stay a constant distance from a position between cells (half a Camel leap for the Curved Rhino of Leaping Bat Chess, half a Zemel leap for the Curved Quagga, half a Gimel leap for the Curved Okapi, et cetera). Here is an illustration for the Curved Rhino:
- 0 7 - 1 - - 6 * 2 - - 5 - 3 4 -The Curved Sprilpaca stays an Antelope's leap from a central cell, but cells a Quibbler's leap from that cell are the same distance from that central cell. This illustration shows th path of the Curved Sprilpaca and the extra cells that get added by replacing each Bitrebuchet leap with two Camel leaps to get a Fiveorbiter:
- - - - - + - - - - - - - 0 - - - - - 7 - - - 1 - - - - - - - 6 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + - - - - * - - - - + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 2 - - - - - - - 5 - - - 3 - - - - - 4 - - - - - - - + - - - - -Likewise the Curved Springbok stays half a Namel's leap from between 4 cells, but vcells half a Quitter's leap from that cell are the same distance from that central cell. This illustration shows th path of the Curved Springbok and he extra cells added by replacing each tripper leap with two Knight leaps to get a Root12½orbiter:
- - - 1 8 - - -
- + - - - - + -
- - - - - - - -
2 - - - - - - 7
*
3 - - - - - - 6
- - - - - - - -
- + - - - - + -
- - - 4 5 - - -
The question is, are these mixed oblique and radial Curved movers worth considering in more depth, perhaps even adding to Man and Beast? I can also imagine orbiters at distances from central locations of the square roots of 65, 32½, 85, and 42½.| square-cell | hex-cell | |
|---|---|---|
| Rook, Bishop | Basic linepieces in short interpretation | Forerook, Hincdrook |
| Queen | Their compound, the compound linepiece in the short interpretation but a basic linepiece in the long one | Rook |
| Knight | The short-range piece in the short interpretation | Viceroy |
| Nightrider | Its rider, the other basic linepiece in the long interpretation | Unicorn |
| Acerider | The compound linepiece in the long interpretation | Duchess |
| Bison | The short-range piece in the long interpretation | Sennight |
What I do notice is that such pieces are oblique analogues to the Tapir in the same way that the -potamus pieces, 45° alternators between square-board duals, are to the Rhino. As an animal, the tapir is the nearest living South American relative of the rhinoceros, and Man and Beast does not yet use he name of the nearest living South American relative of the hippopotamus, the peccary. Therefore I have been wondering whether to substitute the suffix -peccary, so that the 90° Ninja-Nimel alternator would be the Ninjapeccary, the Elf-Lecturer one the Elfpeccary, and so on.
Another interesting group of 45° alternators are those between longer Knightwise and Camelwise leaps. It is no accident that the Knight-Crane, Camel-Chamois, Knight-Cassowary, Camel-Caltrap, Crane-Chamois, and Charolais-Cassowary alternators share the Even Move Directions of the Zebrapotamus, Girafoptamus, Antelpotamus, Zemelpotamus, Satyrpotamus, and Gimelpotamus, so for these I propose prefixing the latter pieces' names with Inverse. The Hippopotamus and Camelpotamus are their own Inverse versions.
A group of 90° alternators that I have recently noticed are those alternating hex pieces with leaps leangths in ratios of root-3 - oblique analogues to the Archimedes that is the 90° Wazir-Viceroy alternator. These include Sennight-Overscore, Aurochs-Barnowl, and Student-Bettong alterntors, and all have as EMD their shorter stage's directions. As yet I have not thought of a sutable suffix for these, but ideas are welcome.
@=statring cell
#=destination cell
a=intersection of b and c
b=7 orthogonal steps
c=1 orthogonal followed by 4 diagonal
d=4 diagonal folloewd by 1 orthogonal
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ / . \___/ . \___/ . \___/ . \___/ # \ \___/ . \___/ . \___/ # \___/ . \___/ / . \___/ . \___/ d \___/ . \___/ b \ \___/ . \___/ . \___/ . \___/ . \___/ / . \___/ . \___/ . \___/ c \___/ b \ \___/ . \___/ . \___/ d \___/ . \___/ / . \___/ . \___/ . \___/ . \___/ b \ \___/ # \___/ . \___/ . \___/ c \___/ / . \___/ b \___/ . \___/ d \___/ b \ \___/ . \___/ b \___/ . \___/ . \___/ / . \___/ . \___/ b \___/ . \___/ a \ \___/ . \___/ . \___/ b \___/ d \___/ / # \___/ c \___/ c \___/ a \___/ a \ \___/ . \___/ . \___/ . \___/ a \___/ / d \___/ d \___/ d \___/ d \___/ @ \ \___/ . \___/ . \___/ . \___/ . \___/
No, as I have already cited a counterexample to that conjecture if you include triangles of side zero. The orientation of the hypotenuse on the board matters as well as its length. I will have a think to see whether I can formulate the conjecture with purely numeric variables.
"I think the 4-coloring of the hex board can help to prove this. See wikipedia's 4-coloring image. If a leap has odd SOLL, then in any right angle diagonal-orthogonal path--say m diagonal and n orthogonal as before--we must have that m and n have different parities (else 3m^2+n^2 is even). Then the starting and landing cells have different colors in the 4-coloring. But each orthogonal-diagonal pair of directions at right angles involve exactly two colors, one of which is the starting cell's color. So traveling along distinct orthogonal-diagonal directions lands at distinct color cells."
I will have to think about this offline and reply at a later date.
That is certainly part of what I was hoping someone could prove or disprove. It is self-evident for two orthogonals at right angles on a square-cell board, or even three on a cubic one. It is self-evident for a diagonal and an orhogonal with a 45° turn on a square-cell board. It is even self-evident for two orhogonals with a 60° turn on a hex board. It is however not only not self-evident for a diagonal and an orhogonal at right angles on a hex board, but untrue in the case of an even SOLL. Again taking m diagonal and orthogonal steps, m=1, n=1 gives the same destinations, not just leaps of the same length as by m=0, n=2. Likewise m=1, n=5 gives the same destinations as m=3, n=1. For odd-SOLL leaps I suspect from lack of counterexamples, and for prime-SOLL leaps I strongly suspect, that such duplicate vaules of m and n for the same destination are impossible, but cannot yet prove either. I have now checked all values of m up to 20 and n up to 40.
In the first case m must be even, in the second n must be even, and in the third m+n must be even. With an odd SOLL exactly one of these is the case and so only one of the three pairs of equations holds true. With an even SOLL all three are true and so all three pairs work, and not necessarily for the same values of m and n.
In the special case of 3m=n, p and q are equal and the first two pairs of equations are identical. In the special case of m=n, all equations except the second hold and q is zero and m and n both p/2. The missing equation may hold for different values of m and n if p and q are even.
Lion
2 2 2 2 2 \|X|X|/ 2-3-3-3-2 X|X|X|X 2-3-2-3-2 X|X|X|X 2-3-3-3-2 /|X|X|\ 2 2 2 2 2This piece's move can comprise either one King step or two, not necessarily in the same direction, with a choice of capturng or not capturing any piece on the intertnediate square.
Lioncub
2 2 2 2 2 \|X|X|/ . 1 1 1 . \|/ . . 0 . . . . . . . . . . . .This is a Lion restricted to moves comprising forward steps only. This means that it cannot make any move returning to its starting square, including Igui capture. Nor can it capture on a square one rank ahead of its starting square and then move to anoter square on that rank.
Superlioncub
2 2 2 2 2 \|X|X|/ 2-3-3-3-2 \|X|X|/ 2-1-2-1-2 . . . . . . . . . .This is a Lion restricted to moves comprising forward and sideways steps only. Unlike the ordinary Lioncub this piece can make moves returning to its starting square, but only via squares on the same rank. This means that it can Igui capture only pieces on its starting rank. Note also that it cannot move to squares on its starting rank after going to a square one rank in front.
Goldlioncub
2 2 2 2 2
\|X|X|/
2-3-3-3-2
\|X|X|/
2-3-2-3-2
|\|/|
. 2-1-2 .
|
. . 2 . .
This is a Lion restricted to moves comprising Goldgeneral steps. It can Igui capture only orthogonally adjacent pieces. It can move to adjacent squares on its starting rank in two steps, but only if the forward step is the diagonal one and the backward step the orthogonal one, regardless of order.
Silverlioncub
2 2 2 2 2 \|X|X|/ . 1-1-1 . / X|X \ 2 2 2 2 2 \|/ \|/ . 1 . 1 . / \ / \ 2 . 2 . 2This is a Lion restricted to moves comprising Silvergeneral steps. It can Igui capture only diagonally adjacent pieces. It can move to adjacent squares on its starting rank in two steps, but only if the forward step is the orthogonal one and the backward step the diagonal one, regardless of order. It cannot move to squares on an adjoining rank in two steps, or to any part of its starting rank in one.
Supersilverlioncub
2 2 2 2 2 \|X|X|/ 2-3-3-3-2 X|X|X|X 2-3-2-3-2 X|X X|X 2-1-2-1-2 / \ / \ 2 . 2 . 2This is a Siverlioncub that can also make sideways steps. It can Igui capture only pieces on a different file. It can move to adjacent squares on its starting rank in two steps, but only if the forward step is the orthogonal one and the backward step the diagonal one, regardless of order.
Lionfiler
2 . 2 . 2 \ / \ / 2-1-2-1-2 X X X X 2-1-2-1-2 X X X X 2-1-2-1-2 / \ / \ 2 . 2 . 2This is a Lion restricted to moves comprising steps that change file, although two steps can cancel out. Like the Supersilverlioncub it can Igui capture only pieces on a different file. It cannot move to squares on an adjoining file in two steps, or to any part of its starting file in one.
Lionranker
2 2 2 2 2 \|X|X|/ . 1 1 1 . /|X|X|\ 2 2 2 2 2 \|X|X|/ . 1 1 1 . /|X|X|\ 2 2 2 2 2This is a Lion restricted to moves comprising steps that change rank, although two steps can cancel out. It can Igui capture only pieces on a different rank. Like the Silverlioncub it cannot move to squares on an adjoining rank in two steps, or to any part of its starting rank in one.
Copperlioncub
2 2 2 2 2
\|X|X|/
. 1 1 1 .
|\|/|
. 2 2 2 .
\|/
. . 1 . .
|
. . 2 . .
This is a Lion restricted to moves comprising Coppergeneral steps. It can Igui capture only pieces otrhogall;y in front of or behind it.
Tilelioncub
2 . 2 . 2
\ / \ /
. 1 . 1 .
|\ /|
. 2 0 2 .
\|/
. . 1 . .
|
. . 2 . .
This is a Lion restricted to moves comprising Tilegeneral steps. It cannot Igui capture as none of the one-step moves are retractable.
I understood that the Liondog of the larger Shogi variants was simply a Rook limited to moves of up to three steps and could not, for example, capture a piece and continue th moev afterwards. Thgis is certainly the impression that the Tai Shogi page gives. Is this not correct?
By the way, is anyone else having trouble reading the backslashes in the movement diagram? They look fine in the preview, but I cannot see them in the final display of the comment.
So what might this pece me termed? It might be worth trying naming it nased on its move, which is a radial step followed by an "outward" Knightwise one to reach a Bison destination. The best way that I can think of to illustrate this is by marking destinations as upper-case A-H and the required pass-through square by the equivalent lower-case letter, as follows:
.BA.AH. B.....H C.bah.G ..c@g.. C.def.G D.....F .DE.EF.The destinations are clearly Bison ones, but it is weaker than the Bison as the Mao is weaker than the Leaping Knight. It is however stronger than George Duke's Falcon as it has the latter's first-perimeter pass-through square but can leap over second-perimeter pieces.
At fist I thought of combining the Bi of Bison and Fa of Falcon anf came up with Fabian, the name of a fairly famous ancient Roman politician, but then I wondered whether it might be better to go for something with the C and A so that "King followed by outward..." (Kfbo) could be extrapolated to things other than the Knight. Extrapolating based on Falcon would not make sense as Kfbo Camel has Giraffe and Charolais destinations as against the Fantail's Zemel and Charolais ones, Kfbo has Charolais and Antelope destinations as against the Puffin's Charolais and Rector ones, et cetera.
I do have the precedent of a one-off that can't be extrapolated in Workhorse for a Pawned Helm when my name for the Pawned Knight, Challenger, can be extrapolated. Thus a Pawned Zebra is a Zhellenger whereas I have no one-word name for a Pawned Stripe. However I do have the phrase to describe it, and there could me case for changing Workhorse as well - but I digress. back to Daniil Frolov's new piece.
With so many piece names starting with C already I about a Mar- word, modelled on Marshal. Theoretically this could ectrapolated across the board regardless of the SOLL's remainder modulo 4. Thus if for example Kfbo Knight were a Marauder the one with Kfbo Camel would be a Camauder, Kfbo Zebra a Zebauder, Kfbo Giraffe a Girauder, Kfbo Antelope an Antauder, Kfbo Zemel a Zemauder, et cetera.
One thing that this does make me notice, however, is that King followed by outward non-coprime piece is interestng too as its destinations often include coprime ones. Thus Kfbo Dabbaba has Trebuchet/Camel destinations, Kfbo Elephant has Zebra/Tripper ones, Kfbo Trebuchet has Cobbler/Giraffe ones, Kfbo Charolais has Satyr/Gimel ones, and so on. Should I try extraplating to these as well and call them Dabauder et cetera? A problem is that Charolais and Chamois have the same first 3 letters. Should I use 4 letters in the case of the non-coprime ones?
Any further thougts are welcome.
The pieces on the middle level and the middle filestack, save for their intersection, are of course standard Xiang Qi pieces, albeit ones able to leave that level or filestack and reach the rest of the board. Of the pieces on the long diagonals of ranks the Guards are Man and beast 01 Viceroys (as acknowledged) and the Eunuchs Man and Beast 06 Stepping Eunuchs, while the Battering rams, Fireworks, and Mules are Brooks, Acannons, and Stepping Nsextons from Man and Beast 12 - the B, A, and N stand for Bishop, Arrow, and Ninja. Interestingly I originally termed the Nsexton a Mule myself until I decided to substitute something more suitable for extrapolation - to Uelf for a Camel analogue, Lfencer for a Zebra one, et cetera (U being for Underscore and L fr Lecturer).
The promoted Hirelings are essentially Fwazirs (F for Ferz) without the backward step. The plain Wazir with no backward step I term a Superpoint, but that will clearly not do for a different piece. Perhaps it should be considered a Super- verion of a notional Cpoint (C for Cross), and so termed a Supercpoint.
The piece at the centre of the end ranks is essentially a royally-restricted version of the compound of the Wazir and Fwazir, and the promoted Lieutenant the compound of Superpoint and Supercpoint. This hints at the possibility of other compounds such as Rook+Brook, Cannon+Acannon, and Knight+Nsexton - alongside the Baron (Ferz+Viceroy) and Elk (Elephant+Eunuch). Any ideas about a naming pattern for these pieces?
The names Battering ram, Firework, Hireling and Mule are not currently in Man and Beast, but Ram on its own is Horn+Point, the forward form of he Besieger, in Man and Beast 01 and Fire- as a prefix indicates the direction of Man and Beast 10's Firegeneral, which is Rumbaba+Heir. Lieutenant I use for Sexton+Lecturer in Man and Beast 05.
The best that I can devise is that at the turning point it might go through a radial but not bounce off one. Here are some examples on the FIDE board: Valid Prince-Knight Monster moves include a1-a2-b4, going through the a2-b1 and a2-g8 diagonals; a1-b1-d2, going through the a2-b1 and b1-h7 diagonals; and a1-b2-c4 and a1-b2-d3, both going through rank 2 and file b. They do not include a1-a2-c3, as it bounces off the a2-g8 diagonal; a1-b1-c3, as it bounces off the b1-h7 diagonal; a1-b2-a4, as it bounces off file b; or a1-b2-d1, as it bounces off rank 2. Does this seem a satisfactory and sufficiently rigorous definition?
(1) The Korean Cannon can also make an orthognal Grasshopper move without a Rook move following it, whereas the Mao cannot make a Wazir step without then making a Ferz step and so its octagonal analogue cannot make a Wazir or Ferz step without then making a Knight leap. Another way to look at the Korean Cannon is that it makes an orthogonal Cntragrasshopper move preceded by an optional Rook move.
(2) The Chinese Cannon is something more complicated, a divergent piece that can make a noncapturing move only as a Rook but a capturing one only as a Korean Cannon.
A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A -B---C---C---B- ---D-------E--- -------F-------where the letters are arbitary and no piece has a forward long-range orthogonal move - although B or C might have a forward long-range diagonal move or D or E a forward long-range Knightwise move. It was not however that idea for a square array that inspired me to think further. Instead it occurred to me to have a board with double the numbre of cells per rank, starting with 1. Initially I thought of going up to 16 and having two ranks that size before halving again back to 1, but then I began analysing what sort of cells this generates and I realised that by having just 9 cells on each middle rank I could make all the cells pentagonal. This resulted in the following array:
--------------- | k | --------------- | q | c | --------------- | r | n | n | r | --------------- |p|p|p|p|p|p|p|p| ----------------- | | | | | | | | | | ----------------- | | | | | | | | | | ----------------- |P|P|P|P|P|P|P|P| --------------- | R | N | N | R | --------------- | Q | C | --------------- | K | ---------------The pieces are the Constrictor, Nadder, Rattlesnake, and Quetzalcoatl as defined in SerPent Chess, together with the Point of Wellisch hex Chess and the King. I rejected using the Boa as it is too weak. Points are promoted to Constrictor, Quetzalcoatl, or Mamba on entering the enemy camp. A Shogi variant would substitute Gold for rhe compound pieces, Silver for Nadder, and Waggle for Rattlesnake, with usual Shogi promotion.
Has anyone got any good ideas for a name for this third pentagonal geometry?
Regarding counterfactual timelines I note that you write specfically of possible ones. Many authors have written of a world in which the Axis powers won World War 2, but I suspect that the only real alternative to a World War 2 won by the Allies would be a World War 2 still going on today. This is because the Axis powers would always have been after "new worlds to conquer" and would have either bitten off more than they could chew or begun fighting among themselves and been defeated by some surviving outside power. Likewise I cannot see any history in which Judaism would have been the world's main religion, or Islam taken off in a big way without Christianity doing so first, both of which I heard suggested in one edition of a radio series considering counterfactual scenarios.
The most plausible idea that I ever heard of what a world without Christianity would have been like was Carl Sagan's vision of Europe using gunpowder centuries earlier, reaching what we know as the Americas centuries earlier, and producing the industrial revolution centuries earlier. So no Christianity would not only have meant no Islam, but no Aztecs and Incas either! He did not go into detail about what the prevailing religion would be, but my own guess is that religions based on the writings of the Greek phliosphers would be widespread. Aristotelians would perhaps predominate but with Stoics and Cynics and Pythagoreans and Epicureans alongside them. This guess is based on what happened in China.
2 2 2 \\ /|\\ / 3-1-3 /|\\|/|\\ 2-1-2-1-2 \\|/|\\|/ 3-1-3 / \\|/ \\ 2 2 2The Midway Lion can in turn be seen as a compound of an orthgonal and a diagonal component, each effectively a Lion confined to each kind of step. For some time I have been trying to devise names of such pieces. Simultaneously I wondered what kind of pieces might suit the names of the imaginary creatures in the first verse of Jabberwocky - Borogove for an orthogonal piece, Rath for a root-2 diagonal one, and Tove for a root-3 diagonal one - and what to call their compounds. Remarkably, only this week did I connect the two trains of thought, naming the Midway Lion's orthogopnal-step(s) component (the Lion's Wellisch and AltOrth hex analogue) the Borogove, its diagonal-step(s) one Rath, and the correspondng piece using steps along root-3 diagonals Tove.
This raised in turn the question of what Lionlike pieces using other mixtures of radial steps might be termed - if the Lion uses King steps, what pieces use Duke and Baron steps? My first thought was to see the Lion as complementary to the Unicorn. No individual step of a Lion move can be in the Unicorn's directions, although a 3d Lion can reach the Unicorn's first-perimeter destinations with a step of each kind at 90° (cubic/hex-prism) or two orthogonal steps at 60° (Tetraheadral/hex-prism). So then I thought about namse to complement the Bishop and Rook respectively. Given that no game designer has managed to use the Rabbit as defined here the name Rabbit might be better deployed as the counterpart to the Lion using Baron steps, in reference to rabbit and rook pie. Thinking of the one using Duke steps was harder - but I persevered as this is the Lion's Glinsky and McCooey hex analogue. It seemed logical to make it a third beast and wondered about Bull, which as well as a beast means a Papal decree, and "bull and bishop" sounded suitably alliterative. Indeed the alliteration would go further with (assuming that Murray and Midway versions apply to all Lionlike pieces) Borogove+Tove=Midway Bull and Rath+Tove=Midway Rabbit. The corresponding pieces for Count, Brassgeneral, and Azuregeneral steps cuold be Bullock, Brassbullock, and Azurebullock, but I am stuck for a diminutive of Rabbit for Heir, Steelgeneral, and Azuregeneral steps. I am also still open to alternative ideas.
Finally the Midway version of a piece could itself be seen as a component of the full piece along with an Alternating version, which would disallow two steps of the same kind within one move. The Alternating Lion is similar to the short-range form of the Double Rhino, but can turn 135° as well as 45°, as follows:
2 2 |\\ /| 2-1-3-1-2 \\|X|X|/ 3-0-3 /|X|X|\\ 2-1-3-1-2 |/ \\| 2 2
I was aware of that in general, I was just a little surprised that it should apply even within a "pre" block, in which no many other special characters such as the return character behave (apparently) normally.
"Pritchard mentions in CECV a game with a similar topologically-pentagonal but geometrically-"doubling" board."
from this thread and
"Pritchard's CECV lists a game "Xyrixa Chess" by David Samuel c.1980 played on this same board (provided I'm reading correctly)."
from the .comments on Tetrahedral Chess, it seems that some Chessboards are more obvious to those who devise Chess variants than we realise when we think of them. Xyrixa is certainly a shorter word than Tetrahedral to describe the 3d geometry with 12 Rook and 6 Bishop directions, and if it is the older name for that geometry perhaps I should use it in place of Tetrahedral in Man and Beast. It would be interesting to know what Mark Thompson thinks. I will however retain the current name for Tetrahedral Shogi, not just because changing the display on search pages takes so long but because it was genuinely inspired by Mr. Thompson's game. Does Xyrixa have any prior meaning, or did Mr. Samuel coin it specifically for the variant?
For an FO Rabbit, would the name Bunny be too kitsch? I know that it is not used exclusively for very young rabbits, but it is one use of the diminutive, especially in the alliterative phrase "baby bunnies".
The connection between the elephant's leg s and the Rook most ingenious, but it is entirely spurious. The shape of the modern Rook is well documented as originating in the similarity of the Arabic Rukh, from which that piece's English name is derived, and rocco, one of the Italian words for a tower. As Chess reached Europe from an Islamic culture, which shunned representational art, there would be no reason to associate any piece with an elephant from the shape of abstract pieces alone.
A European acquainted with the Arabic language might spot a physical reference to elephants, but it would be in the precursor to the Bishop, which was an abstraction of the (male) elephant's tusks. The clue was in its name of Alfil, literally the phrase "the elephant". Someone with such an education would also recongnise Rukh as meaning a chariot, a quite different piece of military equipment. If the Rook ever really did represent an Elephant it was certainly a chariot by the time Chess began spreading west - and for that matter east.
There are other pieces complementing these, and I have gone for non-board names for these. For Oxranker+Bittefiler I suggest the long-unused Ibex, and for Curatranker+Albatfiler Almoner, meaning a giver of charity often for religious motives. I am not sure about Bishop+Carpenter. i wondered about Nutter, a slang term for a mad person, in reference to the Bishop as Fool, but wondered whether some people might consider this an offensive piece name. If anyone can suggest something better, ideally connected with squirrels in some way (it tansforms the Squirrel's Elephant component from proto-Bishop to modern Bishop) for this piece I would be grateful.
One slight distraction in this thread was George Duke's "perimetre". At first I thought that it might be a typo, but it was repeated. Then I wondered if it was a typo of mine that was being emulated by others, but I searched my master documents for it and it was not there. The correct spelling is perimeter in British, as well as North American, English. If anyone is interested I can go into more detail.
The point on colouring is an interesting one - although I could not see any actual rules about what the square colours signify in Chess on the Rainbow. Of course most colourings would eventually render the game something like Pied Chess in appearance, if not necessarily in rules. One exception would be making every face the same standard odd-side board - making the choices of cube 3x3x3, 5x5x5, 7x7x7 et cetera.
Central Rotation Chess seems a necglected game. An anticlockwise version would be very different due to King/Queen assymetry, and might be worth considering as a subvariant.
The article also gets it wrong about precedence. The most important part of a heraldic composition is the background, and as this is the blue of Scotland it is a Sottish flag with other bits bolted on. This could be seen as a recognition that the first king of both relams ruled Scotland before he nherited England.
Of the flags on the second page linked to, the "Union Jackson" looks quite amusing but would be hard to describe in words - or replicate consistently. Options adding the royal arms are just confusing two strands of imagery. The idea for simply replacing te blue with green is the best of tha bunch, but should be done in conjunction with making the red diagonal bits symmetric to complete the removal of the flag's Scottish elements.
3 to the 5
3 player Dabbaba Qi
Epping Forest Chess
Half Shoxiang
Hex Dabbaba Qi
Kamil Crater Chess
Maharajah's Well Chess
Neutral Subject Chess
Sultan's Elephant Chess
Of those nine I would be especially interested to know which ones other CVP members think should go, as well as any that you think I have been too harsh with and should retain.
3 to the 5 was intended to showcase pieces now better showcased by a more recent variant.
3 player Dabbaba Qi and Hex Dabbaba Qi were steps along a path culminating in the much better Trebuqi.
Epping Forest Chess *, Ksmil Crater Chess *, and Neutral Subject Chess are memory-heavy.
Half Shoxiang had a poor response for the original variant and no counterbalancing response for the supposedly better one.
Maharajah's Well Chess * has a very unorthodox board.
Sultan's Elephant Chess * looks like a spoof and coined "Sultan's" piece before I devised a piece actually named the Sultan.
I have wondered about replacing Maharajah's Well Chess with a modest Maharajah v Sepoys variant in which a piece making a long-range move is "in a well" in the sense of creeping back one rank immediately after its move, but am unconvinced of the merits of such a game.
The Trebuqi page mentions, and always will, that there were precursors to that game and might even give their names, but I see no need to include the rules of the older games. Most of the rest do not resemble any later or better variant, because they were never even suited to leading to such games.
Applied to pieces diovergent between forward directions d both kinds, prefixing adds the same kind of move in non-forward directions as the unprefixed piece has in forward directions of the same type. Thus a Goldpawn and Goldyeoman are a Steward and Contrasteward restricted to the Goldgeneral's directions. The Goldsteward is something more complicated still, moving as a Goldgeneral to empty cells but capturing as a Silvergeneral.
Man and Beast 11 extends the first approach to other piece moving in the directions of one of the relevant general's diecrtions, so that Golddabbaba is Dabbaba+Cross and Goldtusk Wazir+Tusk. Applied to pieces with just the forward directions of both components, however, follow the Pawn patter, so that Goldthief is neither Goldgeneral+Thief nor a Thief with the non-forward Wazir moves added but Dabbaba+Tusk. Likewise Goldfaculty is Rook+Tusk and Goldbeak Mitre+Dabbaba.
Prefixing the same article's Pig and Raj pieces is a matter of complementing a component in, in the case of Gold-, either all orthogonal directions or all forward diagonal ones. Thus the Goldsow enhances the Sow's Wazir component, and the Goldsahib the Sahib's Cross component, to Goldgeneral but the Goldboar enhances the Boar's Tusk component, and the Goldmemsahib the Memsahib's Dabbaba cmpomnent, to Goldthief. The Silversow, Silversahib, Silverboar, and Silvermemsahib enhance the other component to the Silver directions. The Goldturtle - which could be defined as Goldgeneral+Silverthief, Sow+Sahib, or Waffle+Fearless - is not even based on an unprefixed Turtle piece.
In summary, the prefixing convention in Man and Beast has never been just about adding the missing moves of the relevant general. A Goldgeneral with the forward orthogonal move extended indefintely but none of the others can also be seen as a Goldsow with its two-step move extended Pocketwise, or the compoumnd of Sowon and Ferzcross. Convenientyl these are two possible interpretations of "Goldsowon", a term that I have not yet formally defined as a piece name but perhaps should. If so it would be in MAB 11 rather than MAB 04.
Regarding the likes of Goldboaron and Silversowon, my first reaction was that you might have a point. What seemed clear to me was that there were not two identical definitions of Goldboaron and its like. What I now realise was not obvious was that there were two obvious definitions at all. The Boaron is a purely diagonal piece, but not a forward-only one, and therefore cannot be made "Gold" simply by adding all Wazir moves. Thinking about it further I can see a justification for interpreting Gold- for the Boaron as replicating on all diagonals only moves of those distances where they are forward-only, as is the case with the Boar. Based on this stretch of meaning they would line up. I will therefore include these on tha basis as well.
It will however take time to complete the rewrite.
Regarding owls the next page of Man and Beast, page 14, has those, hough more from the bird aspect than the predatory one. The Barnowl has a SOLL of 39 and the Snowyowl and Tawnyowl 40 - in conjunction with the Flamingo and Stork having 37 and the Crane 40.
It would not be perfect ven in this. For one thing it would presumably not apply to pre-PYO pages such as my Great Herd. We're probably stuck with that forever just as we are with the pages for which I have posted updates that no editor has time to update. For another it might mean the loss of some pages whose virtues take time to become apparent. If a self-delete had been available at the time when I posted I'm a Wazir... I might well have dropped it as soon as it had been indexed with a bowdlerised introduction. Not well thought out, not very chess-like, theme-heavy, offensive title, it had nothing going for it in my mind at the time. Yet somehow it proved surprisingly playable. Even so, I think that a self-delete would be a move in the right direction.
A stopgap might be to fix it so that changing the title of a PYO page feeds through immediately to indexing so that it appears under the new name. Occasionally I replace a panned variant with something that I hope will go down better, but the change dpoeas not register in indexing until an editor intervenes. Thus for a while the page of my modest variants was indexed as Voyager, the single unsatisfactory theme-heavy variant that that family of games replaced.
While planning the changeover I read on this thread that editors could mark a page as hidden, or even as deleted, even if pages really cannot be actually deleted. Now I am not asking for anyone to do this to any of my pages just yet, but am interested to know how easily it could be done to order. It does not appear possible to do this in "edit indexing", but were I to put in an update text along the lines of "variant withdrawn - editors please mark as deleted" could I rely on an editor to so mark them?
There is one variant with which I am especially inclined to do this as it will allow me to get rid of an otherwise unused entry in my Man and Beast piece articles. If I get the go-ahead I will take this approach.
The next tranche of variants that I am considering discontinuing are as follows:
Anglis Qi modified to add Cannons and Arrows, which makes for quite a cramped 8x8 board.
Crooked Board Chess, unwittingly covering ground dealt with by other people's older variants.
Emperor's Nobility 3d Latrunculi, a not very Chess-like 3d variant with a complex chain of promotions.
Gateway Chess, another one-off microregional like many of those that have already gone and with awkward not-very-Chess-like extra rules.
Intrusive Squares, unwittingly covering ground dealt with by other people's older variants.
Partnership Mitregi, an 8x8 promotion-free Shogi variant.
Pawn the Brain, originally a showcase for divergent-piece names that I have replaced with a simple prefix for the original Take the Brain pieces.
Sextuple Besiege Wellisch, a hex version of my Quadruple Besiege variants and hard to illustrate.
Square Versus Hex and Xiangcata, two variants whose mixture of geometries forces my Man and Beast to qualifying some pieces "only avaliable in 3d" with "usually".
I would therefore be interested to know what everyone thinks of getting rid of them, and whether anyone rallies to their defence. Crooked Board and Intrusive Squares, in particular, I feel are overdoing what the two Dream Chess pages and L-shaped Chess do relatively well. Pawn the Brain escaped the first tranche of deletions only because it takes up so little memory. Gateway Chess escaped because I am thinking of reusing the name for a cubic-cell variant - still with concavities but with no shopping-related rules - and would be interested to read what others think of my new idea.
The new Gateway Chess would be based on the fact that one large and two small Xiang Qi sets are a good way to get 1 aside of 1 piece type, 2 aside of 6, and 4 aside of 6 more - I have in mind Emperor for the first, Queen/Duchess/Governor/Oberon/Samurai/Churchwarden for the next group, and Rook/Bishop/Unicorn/Ninja/Sextojn/Knight for the last group. Unfortunately it has only 10 aside of whatever Pawnlike piece I would choose, which is why I would envisage the front rank of each camp as a relatively narrow "Gateway".
Would it be better to stop using multi-ciolumn tables with a view to suitability for mobile phones? If so, I will have to change quite a few of my pages.
Sorry, that should have been 10x10, not 100x10. The latter size would be too large even for me - including in the 3d sense of a cube of side 10.
12 Sharp Chess;
16 Seasons;
2 Jewels;
2 Level Guru Mahachaturaji;
3 Level 4 Player variants;
3 Player Honeycomb;
4 Faces;
4 Linepiece Fusion;
Armies of Faith 1/2/3/4/5/6;
BacCanCat;
Brookschach;
Chaturanga with minor changes;
Commedia dell'Arte Chess;
Compact Hex;
Cornucopia;
Courier Leapale;
Crossover-piece Dual-dircetion variants;
Crouching Stepper... ;
Diamond Ring Chess;
Double Cross Besiege;
Fimbriated Chess;
Flyover Xiang Qi/Shogi;
Gutenschach;
Half Nearlydouble;
2 and 3 dimensional Herichess;
Hourglass Hex Chess;
Irwell;
Larger Wildeurasian Variants;
Lengthleaper Chess;
Mini Fivequarters;
Mitred Framing 1/2/3;
Nested Chess/Xiang Qi/Shogi;
Notchess;
OctHex 146;
Pass Variants;
Proto Prelates;
SerPent;
Shoxiang 108;
Small Game Nearlydoubles;
Stock Goes East 49 Files;
Taijitu Qi;
Tardis Taijitu;
Tee Garden Shogi;
Tetrahedral Shogi;
Turn Qi;
Twin-board Ecumenical Chess;
Weltschach;
Westfield Chess;
Yo[n]o Shogi;
Yoto.
Any of you who have seen these in the old form and dismissed them as badly designed might wish to revisit them now that the tabulation issue has been ironed out.
Anglis Taijitu rnbqkbnr ac----ca -------- -------- -------- -------- AC----CA RNBQKBNR Yanglis rnbqkbnr pcpaapcp -p-pp-p- -------- -------- -P-PP-P- PCPAAPCP RNBQKBNR Anglis Eurasian rc-aa-cr -nbqkbn- pppppppp -------- -------- PPPPPPPP -NBQKBN- RC-AA-CR Anglis Hindcannon -c-aa-c- rnbqkbnr pppppppp -------- -------- PPPPPPPP RNBQKBNR -C-AA-C- Anglis Midcannon rnbqkbnr c--aa--c pppppppp -------- -------- PPPPPPPP C--AA--C RNBQKBNR Anglis Forecannon rnbqkbnr pppppppp -c-aa-c- -------- -------- -C-AA-C- PPPPPPPP RNBQKBNR
Of course doing multi-image diagrams raw has its costs as well, which is why I emphasise stored. That is where ffen diagrams come in, as regards traditional computing. As far as the HTML document is concerned it is a calculated image, taking up not much more space in the text of the page than a single image but without an image file's use of memory outside the text of the page either. As far as a large enough screen is concerned they also behave like a single image, at least if nothing else is on the same line, and desktop monitors have been getting bigger all century. The problem is how they behave on the mobile devices to which this thread's title refers - and I am guessing that Ascii Art is not very mobile-friendly either.
Now there are various facilities for playing many of the variants on these pages, and I would be surprised (and indeed disappointed at the capabilities of programming) if they generated an image file for every position that ever came up. In terms of more typical programming, It would be the equivalent of every control on a Visual Studio form replicating the entire definition of tha control. What I do not know is how the playing facilities stand up to use on a tiny screen. If they can be made to behave as single images even on-screen, surely something can be done somewhere along the line that can be done to make ffen diagrams do so as well. It would be a shame to lose such a useful shorthand for want of it functioning on mobile devices.
Both Castlings would take place the same side of the King, depending whether the inner Rook was still there.
For the record, in case an editor has time to make - and better success updating - the changes, the intention was to replace the three ffen diagrams on the Nearlydouble Chess page with the following virtual images respectively:
When my attempt to edit fails I get error 403. When it is successful a garbled version of the variant appears on the next page - but with the "view submission" link at the bottom so that I can continue to the page as edited.
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