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All the King's Men
. Page describing variant chess pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The correct url is: http://www.mayhematics.com/v/gm.htm Hugs!
Again, this page disapeared. The link gives a 404 message. Hugs.
Now found at http://www.mayhematics.com/v/v_gm.htm
I start ''Piece-types'' first of all to look at Hoppers. There is incredibly nothing in CVPage on ''Hoppers,'' surprisingly nothing at all. Jeliss here has: Auto-hopper, Contra-hopper, Equihopper, Fore-hopper, Step-hopper, Line-hopper, Oppo-hopper, Leaper-hopper, L-hopper, Overhopper, Rider-hopper. You can see ''Equihopper'' and ''Overhopper'' are regulars -- therefore needing no hyphenation any more. The two already were become part of the established usage and vocabulary mid-20th Century among serious variant problemists. It was a time when conscientious and respectful contemplation of the Heterodox dictated quality and polite forbearance from anything unnecessarily weird. Credits were duly accorded for good ideas, and inventors duly accepted corrections as to priority with aplomb. That someone else got there first just satisfied, as it ought, one's assurance that, hey, great minds can sometimes think alike. None of today's re-inventing the wheel, even ridiculously 50 or 80 years after first implementation. Now all of the above are (sub-)categories of Hopper as piece-type, and none of them in and of themselves yet identifying any actual specific pieces in their mere naming. Some actual variant pieces, pursuant to the categories (and subcategories) within family of Hoppers -- besides Cannon (in part) and Grasshopper -- being very brief, are Moo-hopper, Moa-hopper, Rook-hopper, Knight-hopper. Hey again, certain Knight-Hopper and Nightrider cells indeed overlap in their differing modalities! If you cannot get there one way, there may be another way, in the manner of the very other piece of these two.
H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Jul 12, 2008 07:07 AM UTC:I had never heard of the term 'darter' and the only image it brings to mind is this silly game of throwing arrows. I can't really relate that to Chess pieces. 'Lame leaper' OTOH seems intuitively obvious. The qualification 'lame' is not intended to be a complimnt: it is a clear disadvantage over an ordinary leaper. If that leaper covers a range of 2 or more, that is. Ferz and Wazir cannot suffer, but it would be better to call those 'steppers' than 'leapers' (i.e. the same distinction as between 'sliders' and 'riders'). A Mao is almost exactly worth half a Knight, when you let it participate in a normal Chess game. Of course the Mao is a worse-than-average example of a lame leaper, as the paths for its moves overlap, so that two moves can be blocked with one piece. The Falcon in multipath, but also suffers from this effect, partly undoing the multipath advantage. Perhaps it would be useful to define an 'effective number of paths', as the conductivity of a network of 1-Ohm resistors connecting the squares through which it moves. This would result in 8 for a normal Knight, but would reduce to 2.66 for a Mao, while 8 moves that could be independently blocked on non-intersecting paths would have 4. The calculation for a Falcon would be a complicated problem in cicuit theory, though.
D's. Dabbabah can reach only 1/4 the squares on boards sizes n x m, where n and m even integers >2. Dame is Queen in more than three languages. Darter is better tag for Falcon than uncomplimentary lame; saying essentially nothing, lame is not descriptive enough, or at all, for multiple paths unspecified. Darter tells not the whole story either, but Falcon can better be called three-path darter, or with some redundancy now, three-path-minimal-distance darter of fixed length. Darter is the far older, established term, and we should eliminate lame that Betza began promulgating after 2000. Jeliss' first example is Alfil Darter, that from e1 cannot go to g3 if f2 occupied. Also, the Knights Mao and Moa that if either e2 or f2 occupied, one or the other cannot get to f3. Betza plays with many like these in an article. Directed pieces would include Falcon and Hunter of Falcon-Hunter (Karl Schultz 1943) the example of Jeliss, Centennial Chess(1997) Spearman, Outback Chess (2003) Platypus.
Okay 'C's. ''Caissa'' is Chess poem by William James in 18th century, the time of Philidor and Kempelen's chess-playing Turk, copying techniques of medieaval chess moralities by Vida and others. 1930's book by Dawson is 'Caissa's Wild Roses'. Probably Bishop preceded Camel by a century. Dawson's column was in mainstream British Chess Magazine until death in 1951. Cannon is Pao, Xiangqi Knight is Mao, Knight going one diagonal one orthogonal instead is Moa. Notice the name J.P. Boyer under ''Circean piece'': Boyer and Betza have the most games in Pritchard's 1994 'ECV'. ''Clockwork Mouse'' is not fully explained but would be related to Fourriere's Windmill in Pocket Polypiece, invented by Alexandre Muniz for 'Royal Standard' in 1997 here. Contra-hopper will come up under 'H' about all the Hoppers. Gilman follows earlier names Commuter(4,4), Tripper(3,3) etc. so far as I have noticed, motivated to respect his countryman's catalogue. CVPage uses ''compound'' more for synonymous combination piece. Cylindrical Chess is one of top ten played at Brainking.
Let's move on to the 'B's'. Jelliss talks of an update. My favourite B's would include two by Betza. Black Ghost, the teleporting piece that cannot capture. Basilisk, which seeing any piece immediately petrifies it ''thrown into paroxism of torment.'' Here Banshee is Bishop + Nightrider. Banshees figure in Clifford Simak's science fiction 'Goblin Reservation', and Dragon in Simak is lone holdover surviving the immediately-prior Universe. Edmund Hebermann's 1920's Berolina Pawn is still about the best anyone can do in 8x8 revision. Winther's later 30 types of bifurcation pieces should be adapted to 8x10, 9x10, and 10x10 more than the few already on larger than 8x8. First functional use of 'Bison' compound leaper, stuck and lost like Simak's 'Way Station' within one or two problems for twenty years, is precisely Falcon in 1992, generalizing it for compatibility with RNB. (My multi-path article enunciates that multiple paths are the norm: even Rook's pathway is not automatic until defined and explained. For example, Sissa goes to the Rook's same [(0,1), (0,2), (0,3)...] by two pathways different from Rook's particular one pathway.) Modern Bishop appeared only around time of 13th-century Courier Chess, because it was hard to visualize all-length diagonal pathways on unchequered boards earlier. So, 'A' Alfil had exclusive life as solo diagonal piece beyond one square for over 500 years.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Let's finish the A's. Italian alfieri and Spanish alfil show transit of Chess from India, where Sanskrit word for elephant corresponds, across Persia and Arabia. Sorrifully, one of the very last places Chess reached is Russia, hence its popularity. Chess pieces Alfil and Amazon are respectively too weak and too strong for most modern purposes. Amphibean is rather unnecessary tag, basically just meaning compound. Frog for example is Wazir plus Trebouchet (0,3), the latter component catalogued if not named by Charles Gilman now with my deliberately-archaic spelling. V.R. Parton's Anti-King Peter Aronson recycles in AntiKing Chess. Problem-theme arrow pieces gain extra strength, or offensive coverage, upon checking. To help out with example, Autohopper type of piece may be found in 1930's Chess-Battle out of precisely Russia, in its Cavalry unit. It just means Cavalry may overleap only friendly pieces. Antipodean piece, from British and German periodicals mid-20th century, to reappear at (4,4), could just as well go anywhere else by varying definition. How about Antipodean (7,7), disappearance and reappearance at (7,7) from one corner to another? And taking the whole 64 board of 8x8 squares along with it.
Bifurcating Eagle moves same-Grasshopper-like but turns immediately 90 degrees in the two alternatives: ''two'' makes it precisely the bifurcator that it is. Eagle then cannot move from the opening situated anywhere in back rank behind Pawns. At the d1 on 8x8 in place of Queen, Eagle must stay put at least until an adjacent Pawn has moved. If first 1) d2-d4 ... , then 2) Eagle d1-c4 or d1-e4 at choice become possible. // Next, Asp makes the full Grasshopper hop, then continues as Queen after 45 degree turn. So, if Asp begins Bishop-like, the continuation is Rook-like, and vice versa. It is not clear whether Asp can capture two pieces per turn, presumably not, and if an enemy sits at the ''Grasshopper-hop square,'' immediately beyond the piece (either colour) overleaped, the move is simply illegal. // Sure enough, bifurcating Sparrow makes the G-Hop and turns either (precisely two) way 135 degrees. At standard d1, that would entail d1-c2-c1, and such-like; and since you cannot capture your own Bishop, let alone King at also-reachable e1, Sparrow, like Eagle, has not the opening options of Moose, Asp (and Knight) and must also wait for developments.
Let's run through Jelliss. Under 'B' Bifurcating piece, Winther later develops many more of these after 2003. Jeliss' include Moose, bifurcating Grasshopper. T. R. Dawson's Grasshopper (1912) moves Queenlike and jumps to the next square, capturing or not: the jump is mandatory, and obviously own piece there would be illegal. Now Moose's same modality turns it 45 degrees: two possibilities essentially. To elucidate, from the opening at Queen spot on 8x8, as first move of game, Grasshopper may move over Pawn d1-b3, d1-d3, or d1-f3; whereas Moose instead may move d1-c3 or d1-e3. Neat. Thus Moose, unlike template Grasshopper, is multi-path, that is two-path, to its very closest squares (only); and original Grasshopper is stricty single-path to all its destinations. Jeliss has three more bifurcators, Asp, Eagle, and Sparrow we shall visit. And Winther has 30 or so more of these bifurcation pieces.
Thanks for the nice comments on 'All the King's Men'. It's time I got round to updating it. However describing a camel as a (2,4) mover instead of (1,3) mover would be an historically retrograde step. The length of a camel move (from centre to centre of the two squares) is given by the pythagorean formula (square root of sum of squares of the coordinates of the move). That is in this case root(1x1 + 3x3) = root10. Also in working out the destination of a series of camel moves it is the 1s and 3s that have to be added, not the 2s and 4s.
Before posting any Variant, of course, many designers read over Truelove's piece list for prior uses and have checked Pritchard's 'ECV'. Really it is incumbent on the conscientious inventor of new fairy Chess Rules-set also to read and learn George Jeliss' 100 or so standard definitions. At the outset, we take one exception to descriptive practice here. Jeliss calls, for example, Camel (1,3) leaper, as do most other analysts. We prefer to say (2,4), to denote rectangle of squares involved, not any movement itself stepwise. The preference for (2,4) instead rests on their being many pathways from starting square to opposite corner of (2,4), the ones with 90-degree change(s) of direction not especially more natural than ones showing 45- or 135-degree. Similarly, Antipodean piece, reappearing at (4,4) by Jeliss' usage really refers to opposite corners of (5,5) array of squares, more clearly delineating and ignoring the awkward four steps horizontal then abruptly four steps vertical, or vice versa, intended to be meant by ''(4,4).''
brilliant page describing heaps of fairy pieces!
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