Comments by nelk114

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

Would Propagandist be too on the nose?

Agronomist is (sort of) Gilmanese for the 8:5 leaper (XBetza GXY). Though whether that piece is much use (arguably even in compounds) is a good question

And yeah the Reapman is probably pretty useless; a one‐square difference from what's already a much less interesting piece than the Boyscout.

The Harvestman also features in Cetina's larger Universal Chess (UC–170–13)

@Bob:

With the missing pieces I wasn't so much referring to your page(s); this is a pretty big undertaking and there's no indication or expectation that it's ready yet (assuming it can ever Satisfy Particular Standards for Completeness). I was referring to the Utrecht SVG set that you linked to earlier in the thread

@Jean‐Louis:

The obvious place to upload them would be in a graphics dir associated with one of your pages, though I agree it's not really clear which one to choose as the original page is pre‐‘post‐your‐own’. That would probably be better though than sending it to me; the email address on my profile works but is very annoying to access (Yahoo! dislikes Tor), and other people may be interested too. Worst case, you could always post it as a new page I suppose (depending on how much work you want to bother putting into it). Though tbh I was half‐expecting Bob would evetually upload them anyway ;‌)

Strictly speaking of the names Bob's proposed for the Bt[WzB], only Disciple is not also given to a piece in M&B; the Apostle is a (cubic) qB (moving in rings of 6 steps like the hex Finch whose dual it is) and the Evangelist is another cubic piece combining Picket (cf. Tamerlane) and Eunuch (2 steps nonstandard‐diagonally, i.e. unicornwise).

Only the Apostle has actually seen use though, and it could be argued that unlike the Metropolitan (a name I was surprised to see again tbh) whose move is available on the usual board, these are less important anyway, being 3D‐specific. And Evangelist certainly suits this piece well

W‐then‐zB turns up as the Harvestman of Seenschach, used as such also in X Chess and Universal Chess as well as mentioned in M&B13, though Gilman never used it himself.

‘Crooked rhino’ seems (to the extent that the rhino itself isn't already crooked) to more closely describe what Gilman called Switchback

Continued from another thread:

Wrt the favouriting threshold, I wonder whether it might be an idea for favourites to be weighted? Such that people with less discriminating tastes who have many ‘favourites’ are weighted less than those who make very selective choices? Seems to me that would incentivise keeping your list short while still allowing the flexibility to show appreciation for many games for those who need(?) it (to which ofc the counterpoint is ꝥ that's what Ratings are for, though those are completely lacking in discoverability and are vulnerable to the same issues). Ofc how to determine the right weighting (obviously(?) it can't just be inverse‐linear) is a potentially subtle question.

the situation where childish inventors would create a massive number of garbage variants just to create voting power

I'd imagine that's what the Editors are there to avoid?

But in general I agree that favouriting your own games is something that really ought to be earned; I'd be tempted to propose that could be factored in to a weighting algorithm too, though at that point it starts becoming really quite complicated

EDIT: looking at this comment thread I see that some form of more complex system has been proposed but at least Ben would prefer it to be a separate system; I'd note two things wrt this suggestion: firstly it would be more complicated, but only on the back end — the user experience (selecting whether or not a game is a ‘favourite’) remains identical; secondly, it seems a little odd to be proliferating systems like this — the Featured Games programme is kinda already on that threshold for me tbh, which is why I haven't really engaged with it (otherwise I probably would have been happy to second Metamachy, f.ex., though I don't disagree with H.G.'s assessment about diversity). Just because it might take a little more than 10s to invent a new discoverability system…

It's an interesting board, but I'm not 100% sure how you're intending the pieces to move. Whilst I can sort of guess, I think diagrams would be really helpful here

I swear I've seen the moose pawn used, but I am at a loss as to where; I'll definitely keep an eye out.

I did accidentally (on a tangent after looking in vain at Universal Chess as the obvious candidate) find the Hydra though, in Mutatis Mutandis. It just moves as a knight here though (albeit one that transfoms into a variety of NN's); there may well be a more prototypical use.

I may or may not recognise the Shield Archer — certainly UC uses its components for the Fugue pieces; I'm about 50% on the Winged Cardinal (again no idea where though — maybe Charles Daniel??), and I don't recognise tha rest at all

EDIT: Raptor Chess's eponymous piece has an icon similar enough to the WC that I wouldn't want to play a game with both if it could be avoided, even if the different shape of the cross might be considered graphemic

Fertile Queen is currently hidden as ‘unprocessed’, pending answers (which probably aren't coming, since it's been 3 years) to detail questions

I'm presuming Mr. Gilman was using Metropolitan to describe a woman who does the opposite: living among the people in a city, being around them as much as possible.

Per M&B13, Metropolitan is apparently “a rank in many episcopal churches”, presumably the same as described here on Wikipedia; the connection is thus with the Bishop component in the same way that he uses feminine forms to indicate Rook components.

If you can somehow muster a Pallium that'd probably be about as on point as you can get; failing that, perhaps sth cathedral‐like? (Idr whether you've done a cathedral yet; my usual browser setup is reluctant to show the pictures and in any case seventy‐odd pieces is a lot to remember!)

Re Qilin vs Kirin

For me, the tall knight is the only one of these that both suggests its piece (clearly the long leaper, starting where the Orthochess knight does — though I agree with Bob that it has wider applicability) and would fit in with a Staunton‐style set; I kind of guessed the last one (of the original comment) correctly from its mild rookishness but I wouldn't be confident about it; I find the 3rd and 5th almost indistinguishable w/o direct comparison (presumably the scale would help irl)

The king is nice enough for a very ornate set, provided it had suitably ornate companions to match; the chameleon is kinda pushing it tbh (and doesn't even resemble ebony)

The visual pun is quite funny ngl; I wouldn't have said either it or its replacement is terribly suggestive though

Per the description as an FO Fearful, the Fearless should have no retreating moves at all. I'd imagine it's a copy‐paste oversight or the like

There's one main thing left to fix, though it's probably Charles' error: The diagram for the Primate (WB, top right in the last block of diagrams) has a spurious sideways rook move, of a kind which isn't introduced until Alternative Fronts. Idk whether we consider that within the editors' remit though, esp. with Charles gone

Incidentally, the thing with the mathematical expressions (which you note here and also affects this page's degree signs ⟨°⟩) is the same problem as affected this page, among many others across the site. In principle worth fixing though it may be more difficult to do thoroughly, especially if people have edited affected pages in the interim

The slip bishop doesn't seem to have an established name — its move seems to be less suggestive than the slip rook's colourswitching. Gilman dubs it ‘Bear’, Bear Chess notwithstanding.

Incidentally, apparently the original Seeping Switchers proposal refers to these as wazir‐ and ferzriders (and their compound, that army's queen, as manrider). Looks like Gilman wasn't the first to try to reappropriate these otherwise redundant terms

can anyone think of a better adjective than "shoving"?

Depends; why ‘Flash’ for the bishop? Perhaps there's sth matching for that etymology

Are there any "forced movement" tricks that I missed?

A small plenty ;‌)

Slightly fewer tbf if you consider the various pushing pieces (such as Gilman's Shepherding pieces, Jupiter's Tanks, or the Ox of Ben Good's Elevator), and perhaps even Mats Winther's Catapults, redundant w/ the Rook(/Bishop/Queen).

But even so Jupiter also features a Doubler, allowing pieces in its range to move twice (albeit less forced mov't than augmentation cf. the Relay Knight — see also its Relay pieces and the (original) teleporter); Eight‐Piece Chess has, alongside its immobilising Jailer, a Sentry which temporarily takes control of an enemy piece in lieu of capturing it; and of course (among other Betzas) Nemoroth, with its Ghasts, Go Aways (which gain a Come Here counterpart in Jupiter), and Ichor, is built around ‘compulsion’ (i.e. Zwang). To say nothing of the (presumably out oof scope) Tardis and other perhaps less fantastical vehicles

Incidentally the etymology of the surname is quite the fun anecdote :‌) (and to be completely pedantic, Zwang is the noun; ‘to compel’ is zwingen)

Does anyone know of any still‐extant copies of this?

I am not sure whether [allow[ing] moves of one piece to be relayed from Friend to Friend through moves borrowed from another piece] was the intention of the original definition

It seems none of the info on the CVP, including Orphan resources (which could in principle provide analogous situations) such as the Helpmate problem and the (Wayback Machine copy of) the Torsten Linss problems (linked from the Piececlopedia article), is able to clear this up, and short of finding back‐issues of the British Chess Magazine info on the web seems very elusive

The only other source I could find offhand was Die Schwalbe's glossary, which also doesn't really clear anything up (though it does give rules for initial pawn steps, at least for Orphans: an Orphan may make a double step from its second rank, but only a single step from its first)

Among the freely available Schwalbe issues, a few feature Orphans but apparently none feature both multiple normal pieces that could relay distinct moves and Orphans on both sides that could chain. Friends seem to be completely absent from these issues (indeed, any of the issues whose indices are available), though still present in the Glossary (which clarifies that, at least for the Schwalbe, the Friend explicitly can't promote with a pawn move to the far rank)

Would be interesting to see whether the BCM or Brown's own problem collection made any use of this that could clarify this, but access to either is probably a pain :‌/

It would probably be better to use a 'static' definition, like "when it would be able to capture the Friend if that had been an enemy pawn".

If only direct move pass‐through is allowed as you suggest, this seems uncontroversial; in the case with indirect relay I'm not sure whether that makes the non‐reciprocal passing on (assuming it remins desired — I quite like it myself) more complex to formulate correctly than reciprocal passing on. In principle that same question arises for the Orphan too, though I imagine the chances of finding a problem that relies on either of those possible behaviours is incredibly slim

[The Ghost] captures by "passing through" an adjacent square on its way to the next square beyond

From the diagram I take it this is allowed only when moving to Alibaba destinations?

Since you more‐or‐less explicitly requested a comment on this from me… :‌p

It's certainly an interesting take on Random setups, quite different from the in some ways superficially similar Universal Chess due to Carlos Cetina. The main potential weakness compared to sth with a bit more player agency such as Pick‐the‐Team is that you're relying on statistics to yield a more‐or‐less balanced setup; sometimes it'll work, sometimes it really won't. And ofc especially with Different Pawns and Kings it's probably hard for any but the most experienced(!) players to tell in advaance how balanced a given piece selection will be. Obviously the usual strategies (two games, switching armies; optional Pie rule, ⁊c.) can help w/ this to an extent, but it's sth to bear in mind.

I'm not totally sure the ‘Introductory Rule’ is likely to be much help; defending against unfamiliar pieces is at least as difficult as handling them oneself (as I learned playing Metamachy)

Is the Arrow Pawn described as intended? As written it's a superset (which I recognise from JWB's Meta‐Chess, though idr the name and I don't have the PDF to hand) of the steward (which is not denoted as a pawn — though it's of comparable strength to — indeed in some cases perhaps weaker than — some of the other pawns)

Ngl upon reading ‘Gold Pawn’ and ‘Silver Pawn’ I was half‐expecting the Gilman pieces :‌p Also I like the Zombie Pawn — it's contageon as in Maka Dai Dai (and H.G.'s several spinoffs) but for the opposite purpose

Is there a special rule for castling with a colourbound corner piece, à la CwDA?

It's a small detail, but whilst I'm not normally a fan of the promotion‐only‐to‐captured‐pieces rule, the way it's done here is a nice touch :‌)

The idea of expansions is pleasant, and perhaps with physical sets (and to a degree with software) even makes sense, but in practice is there any reason not just to pick pieces from e.g. one of the existing Cetina UC lists? At least for regular pieces, since the Royal and Pawn lists for those games are perhaps a little anæmic (though again, one could simply merge the lists). Especially since the main point of this (in common with UC, and arguably Pick‐the‐Piece, among others) is afaict less the actual set of available pieces and more the way they're employed (although ofc the obvious counterargument regarding trying to compile a Canonical List of Pieces is always a thing)

I can't find his Camel + Antelope, though

CNY is Hajj, listed right after the hovercraft. Which is really at the point where he's starting to stretch for names imo, given ꝥ it's a proper noun. Cantaloupe seems fine to me (and can even extrapolate to Zentaloupe(=Gilman's Sajj) ⁊c. for those so inclined)

Throw in the Mushroom and Falafel, and we have the makings of a Food Fight game!

Pizza Kings for duodecimal CwDA? ;‌P

You are definitely the Master Piecefinder. ;)

I've been here a while ;‌) (and someone has to take over from George Duke…)

Just got a chance to read through this; some things I noticed:

Melek is Arabic for "king,"

Which dialect is that? I can only find مَلِك (malik) — or, perhaps closer, Hebrew מֶלֶךְ (melech)

[The Emir] is borrowed from Robert Shimmin's game Scheherezade

Afaict it looks like this piece, as well as most of the other Scheherazade [sic] ‘Queens’, was not actually named by Shimmin; H.G. needed names for the ID. Not really sure how best to cite such a thing though

I'm actually not sure where the Snake originated

Betza's Bent Riders article. The shortening to ‘Snake’ is due either to Jean‐Louis or to Eric Silverman, first attested on these pages here

The Satrap moves [as mFmAcWcD]

I assume it's an oversight that you've switched the capturing and non‐capturing moves — Gilman's Satrap operates in pawn/steward directions. Not a big deal ofc; you can trivially swap the Satrap's and Ayatollah's names

the earliest place where I can find [the Arabic/Arabian Spear] is in Hans Bodlander's game Pick-the-Team Chess

Note that in that game, the Arabic Spear is divergent in pawn directions (i.e. it's a mfRcfB or ‘Pawnrider’). The nondivergent piece you describe I remember only as the Princess of several Gilman games, but I'd be surprised if a piece w/ that move wasn't in the larger Shōgis too

As noted in the Piececlopedia, the word "pawn" has its origin in the Sanskrit word "padati"

Pedantically speaking, the word itself only goes back as far as Late Latin pedōnem (pedestrian or footsoldier), albeit as an indirect calque (in French) going back to the Sanskrit term

The emphasis on Camel leaps is certainly striking!

Contravention seems like a much more playable relative of Parton's Contramatic (from Curiouser and Curiouser) with an orthodox set, if less conceptually pure. Ought to be worth a shot

I personally like the second one better, but I rather expect that most people will prefer the first

Fwiw even for those who like the second figurine better, the first is not w/o its uses: it's a practically perfect match for the Orphan

I am not sure to understand what you call "slow" and "catch"

slow is anything starting on an affected space being limited to one step; catch is anything trying to move throught the space having to stop (more‐or‐less as if there were enemy pieces stationed in those squares)

This is kind of "catch" with my understanding. Why you see an explicit "slow" here, I don't know.

I may have misinterpreted your use of “on” in “on its 8 surrounding squares, all (allied or ennemy) pieces can only move 1 step only”; to me that reads like ‘from’ rather than through, giving slow. Your A World of Chess description is fairly explicitly catch‐only

It is a frequent mistake by modern players to think that rules were scrupulously followed by everyone for ancient and traditional games

Of course, the rules probably varied; I was mostly pointing it out as Bob's choice of ‘Hia’ power (catch+slow) differs from my preference (catch only) and raised some awkward questions regarding lame pieces

While thinking this I came up with a compound leaper where the (m,n) pair is any irreducible fraction

Iirc this is the Problemists' Wizard, also found in one of the later Man and Beasts. Indeed, its rider the Witch (as explained by H.G.) has only nonintersecting rides.

Gilman (in Diverse Directions) names those pieces Mara and Capybara, the largest of the rodents (to go with the established Squirrel and his Beaver for Silverman's/Cazaux's Cheetah)

The same would go for things like [D-fQ] or [F-fQ].

Oh that's neat; gives a nice shorthand way of describing the likes of Tripunch pieces.

Though it's perhaps not 100% clear (which might be what H.G. was getting at?) how this interacts with e.g. `[K-fsQ] for the gorgon (gryphon/manticore compound)

BNNY

Very Betzan thinking :‌)

Gilman did end up proposing, a few years later, Rabbit as a Baronwise (i.e. 3D‐exclusive) Chu‐shogi Lion relative; Bunny was tabled later in the same thread for its forward‐only counterpart. They (and the Dukewise — and thus available in Hex — Bull) never made it into Man and Beast though.

I'm not sure what I'd call it

Per Diverse Directions, Narpenter?

Bn Em's quite right, of course; nonsense words are mainly useless, as they give no visuals to base the piece's appearance on.

The objection to nonsense words isn't really mỹ own; after all, (a) pieces with nonsense names are often a bit obscure anyway and (b) several of the more established pieces have nonsense names — not only our alfil and dabbaba but even orthochess pieces (our Rook — unrelated to the bird although the source of some Gilmanese extrapolations — as well as e.g. the Spanish Alfil or (former) Italian Rocco (other modern senses deriving from this one) are all meaningless words outwith Chess) and few seem to mind

Of course these have etymologies (as well, at least in English usage, as synonymous calques) that'll suggest visual representations, but names are not the only possible basis for such: again, the orthodox set often bears precious little resemblance to the standard names, whilst the move is often an equally good suggestor of visuals — see, for example, abstract designs (Bauhaus, f.ex., or H.G.'s Ultima set), or the various extrapolative images in Alfaerie (2‐square leapers with diacritics, Diagonal‐cannon ‘Vao’s, the perfectly evocative non‐animal gryphon and manticore…) and others (the nigh‐ubiquitous knight–slider hybrids)

But, as I said, tastes may (and indeed do) differ ;‌)

Note that Charles Gilman proposed an equivalent definition of outward nearly ten years ago

As to [N-Q] and its like, why not just have it equivalent to [N-R][N-B]? After all, that would give symmetry with [Q-N] as well as making useful an otherwise useless definition (as anything involving the ‘advanced geometry’ would never result in a combination of orthogonal and diagonal moves, making [N-Q] a less elegant synonym for [N-R] (or another leap followed by B)) into a nice shorthand (much like Q itself)