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Caliph. compound of Bishop and Camel.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Anonymous wrote on Fri, Mar 20, 2009 08:57 PM UTC:Average ★★★
I am going to guess that the Caliph is worth 6 pawns ...... agreed? Slightly more than a rook?

Charles Gilman wrote on Mon, Dec 29, 2008 07:13 AM UTC:
Well, this piece has its strengths and weaknesses. It has the strength of mixing long-range moves on radials with oblique leaps that can't be blocked. It has the weakness that, like its components, it is bound to half the board.

Dan D wrote on Sat, Dec 27, 2008 12:22 AM UTC:
Does anybody have a sense for the strength of a Caliph (Bishop + Camel)?? ...... it's ability to attack a King behind lines of Pawns must be considered a great strength.

George Duke wrote on Fri, Nov 7, 2008 01:49 AM UTC:
''Better to use names that have become established through use in many variants, or memorable from a common theme with similar pieces,'' should be Gilman's first sentence not his last. Well said. What piece are we talking about anyway here? Caliph. Which is compound of Bishop and Camel, not serial, or combination, Bishop, Camel, as for example Smith immediately proposes for Hunter-Falcon and Falcon. Actually, I like ambiguous double naming for certain interesting intersections, while officially maintaining standard of priority ruling. In other words, it tolerates breaking the rule at times.

Nuno wrote on Thu, Nov 6, 2008 03:06 PM UTC:
For example, a variant like Grand chess, that has a great impact and good acceptance, could 'impose' as regular the names for the combined R+N and B+N. It is a good criteria, I believe.

Charles Gilman wrote on Thu, Nov 6, 2008 06:17 AM UTC:
As I say, had a consensus built up over both communities I would go along
with it, but that never happened. Neither community has registered highly
on the other's radar. The problematists didn't use Carrera's, or
Bird's, or Capablanca's names for Rook+Knight or Bishop+Knight, they
invented their own, so they can hardly blame us for not adopting their
nomenclature either. Some pieces which apparently work well in problems
are not good for variants, and it would be a waste to reserve names for
them that could be deployed for more useful game pieces.
	Is now the right time to stop adding new names for existing pieces - or
new pieces for existing names? Perhaps, but achieving that entails those
of us who know of duplications highlighting them to everyone else
promptly. I have myself pointed out such anomalies and received short
shrift. Is now the right time to say that it should have been stopped five
years ago, when I first called this piece Caliph in Ecumenical Chess? No,
because it is an impossible task. It is too late to prevent this usage
becoming entrenched through my themed variants, because it has already
happened.
	Should every piece be known by the first name used for it? If so, it
would mean ambiguity as at leat two pieces have first seen the light under
each of the names Champion, Dragon, Falcon, Giraffe, Scorpion - and
probably many others. Should every name be used only for the first piece
to use it? If so, the 1943 usage of Falcon would rule out Falcon Chess.
Should we use an 'established catalogue', regardless of how few it is
established among and how hard it is to remember such names? What's the
problematists' name for the piece on this page? I have no idea and so, I
suspect, have most of us. Do they even have one? Better to use names that
have become established through use in many variants, or memorable from a
common theme with similar pieces.

George Duke wrote on Mon, Nov 3, 2008 04:26 PM UTC:
Without user identification, it is hard to relocate Gilman's positions. Here it is one. I disagree with Gilman on different names for the same unusual piece-type. It is frankly ridiculous. Preoccupation by CVers since year 2000 makes them unaware of earlier names by problemists. One name should be enough for rare exotic pieces, and when priority is discovered it is preferred to stay with the problemists' (or earlier designer's) name. What they do is what CVers do, or should be, despite our malaise of proliferation during these aughts (2000-2009). Take Hoppers. Listed by George Jeliss ''All the King's Men,'' many wonderful hopper-pieces seldom or never appear in CVs fortunately as yet. Virgin territory, but CVers will never learn some things should be left alone. When they eventually do, please it is better to try using Jeliss' established catalogue. Gilman's nomenclature is employed spottily at best, more by myself than anyone. Gilman's system has failed to catch on, and I happen to be its chief adherent for long-range leapers. Let's simplify tasks by not sloppily projecting re-naming into the 21st century, as done with Carrera Centaur and Champion over 4 centuries. Then exhaustive nomenclature may come to have some utility.

Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Oct 26, 2008 07:45 AM UTC:
Ah, you've fallen for the old idea of problematists' names for pieces
being standard. In fact, piece naming follows two very separate strands,
'fairy-problems' - the variant-piece equivalent of newspaper chess
problems - and actual variant games. I would have liked the two
communities to have met long ago to agree a standard naming system, but
they did not. Thus game after game features Wazir+Ferz, but none as far as
I know the problematists' Knight+Ferz, under the name 'Prince'. Likewise
Wazir+Alfil appears as Waffle or Phoenix, never Caliph. What looks like
'duplication' is two separate usages. Only older pieces like Timur's
Giraffe or very obvious nasmes like Alibaba are shared by both. This is
why my extensive use of the piece here under the name Caliph never raised
mention of Wazir+Alfil from any previous contributor. Not being
problematists, most were as ignorant of the other usage of Caliph as I
was. Those who did know also knew of the separation and so never
considered it worth raising.
	For my own preference I value memorability first, while also taking note
of usage in past games and suitability for extrapolation. There being no
intuitive reason why Bishop+Camel should be a Flying Dragon, I forgot -
not even consciously rejected - this naming long before I began using the
piece myself. The Bishop component suggests religion, and the Camel one
certain parts of the world, many of which have Islam their main religion.
Of the various Islamic titles that would have suited that piece, I found
Caliph the easiest to extrapolate - to Bishop+Zemel=Zeliph,
Bishop+Gimel=Giliph, et cetera. 
	An example of where another game designer's name has grabbed my
imagination is Timothy Newton's Kangaroo, also giving a piece which
problematists call by a different name a name which problematists use for
a different piece. For me Mr. Newton's usage had the better appeal,
(Zebra+Alfil=Zengaroo et cetera) and up went my page on the piece as he
had named it. Waffle is also a name that I have taken up for my own games,
its meaning being so blindingly obvious.
	Finally, where I have known about and been inspired by a problematist
name is the Sexton. This inspired my names of most of the shortest-range
cubic oblique leapers. Again its memorability - leap length root 6 - is
what won me over to it in preference to Captain, Red Knight, or Wyvern
(all of which I had to look up).

Anonymous wrote on Fri, Oct 24, 2008 12:39 PM UTC:Poor ★
The name 'caliph' for the Flying Dragon is a clear misnomer. It does not only assign a new name for an already named piece but also assigns a new meaning to an already used name. According to Jelliss, the caliph is a combined (0,1)-(2,2) leaper.

Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, Jun 25, 2005 06:39 AM UTC:
I do refer to the Flying Dragon name, and credit Mark Hedden as the first inventor. I had seen the variant before reinventing it, but the name was not an obvious pointer to the moves (to me Flying suggests the Rook, as in Shogi's Flying Chariot) and I forgot it. I intend using the Caliph in further variants. <p>I am still relatively new to this and making the odd error - but promptly fixing them when notified. Where I gave too little prominence to usages earlier than my own, I now realise the potential of this to give offence and have corrected this faux pas as well. I do not know how to do multiple references in the style of the existing e.g. Chancellor/Marshal pointing to the same page. Advice on how to do them would be a positive and useful contribution.

🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Jun 24, 2005 01:45 AM UTC:
The broken links are caused by the wrong number of '../' in some relative
links. My problem with this page is a general problem I have with most of
Gilman's pages. It is that he tries to use the authority of this website
to give authority to his own naming of pieces. For example, this piece was
previously known as the 'Flying Dragon' by someone who used it before
Gilman, yet he goes ahead and calls it by another name. Furthermore, he
describes his reasons for this name in the passive voice, as though this
is the standard name for the piece, without taking responsibility for
creating the name himself. While I know that the name Caliph is his own
doing, the average reader here would think that the editors here have come
to a consensus on this name. That has not happened, and I think that any
page that Gilman writes should come with the disclaimer that he does not
represent anyone but himself.

I am supposed to be the Piececlopedia editor, and if these pages passed
through me, I would hold them to higher standards. But Gilman has never
passed any of his pages through me. Unfortunately, I don't have the time
to catch his submissions before other editors get to them.

Greg Strong wrote on Thu, Jun 23, 2005 11:05 PM UTC:Poor ★
In addition to the blue circles being dead links, so are the links to Gigachess, Cardnal, and From Undulates Outwards. Lots of dead links. Also, I'm not sure that this piece has enough of a history to belong in this Piececlopedia in the first place. This is a Gilman page, which is clearly an attempt to promote his other inventions, and, being as it is filled with dead links, is a lousy attempt at that.

Jared McComb wrote on Thu, Jun 23, 2005 10:42 PM UTC:
More broken blue circles.

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