Check out Grant Acedrex, our featured variant for April, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Tony Paletta wrote on Mon, Dec 15, 2003 12:01 AM UTC:
Fergus,

Both the Bishop and the Rook do indeed have orthogonal lines of movement.
I touched on this this in a 12-13(?) comment directed to Charles 
concerning why Rooks, and not Bishops, are usually described as are
orthogonal movers; basically, my answer was that its a convention --
meaning a tradition -- and a bow to common usage; since Bishops are
described as diagonal movers it seems relatively harmless to describe
Rooks as orthogonal movers. In fact Solomon Golomb (who developed
Cheskers, Pentominoes and was a leading light in recreational math), in a
write-up on Cheskers, once described Bishops as Rooks on the 32-space
board formed by one color of the chessboard, and Camels (Cooks in
'Cheskers') as Knights on the same board. 

I certainly don't find it a problem to think of Bishops as orthogonal
movers, and I think any rule that uniquely identifies Rooks and not
Bishops with 'the possible set of orthogonal movement patterns' would be
somewhat deficient, since they are simply rotations. 
[Aside: I have used the 'Cheskers' game as an inspiration for a very odd
game called 'Dichotomy Chess' (modest - goal variant), where I also
tacked on a Dabbaba-rider + Ferz (B+K on 32!)].  

My comment about 'straight lines'? It illustrates a construction
guideline that does give rise to straight lines in one context (planes)
and arcs in other (spheres), even though we might have been trying for
'meaning the same thing' and used a rule that is used to produce
straight lines in planes. I certainly don't consider straight lines and
arcs the same thing -- and I don't feel a need to call them both straight
lines, or both arcs. They are simply analogous with respect to the rule of
construction, but do not fully represent the same meaning. 

Walking the 'straight-lines' over to the orthogonal discussion: a rule
that does produce paths of orthogonal movement on a square-grid and can be
applied to produce paths on a hex-grid does not replicate orthogonal
movement on the hex-grid -- it produces sets of movement paths through a
point that are orthogonal on square-grids boards, but not on hex-grids.
Analogous with respect to the rule of construction (and even using the
word right angle -- so it must be legit?) if we apply the rule to square-
and hex-grids, but producing results not reflecting the same type of
thing. 

On a hex-grid, the simplest orthogonal movement pattern involves an
'edge-path' and a 'point-path' (e.g., vertically and horizontally on
the Glinski board). A while ago (few weeks), I indicated to Charles G.
that this is a mapping of a standard Bishop (e.g., from a chessboard
rotated 45 degrees) that was 'halfbound' as opposed to the
'thirdbound' pattern of g-Bishops. 

To try and wrap up my end of this discussion of 'angles dashing from a
hex in a plane'. There exists a usage convention (tradition with a group
of supporters) for using 'orthogonal' and 'diagonal' to describe some
possibly paths on a hex grid. The usage (1) isn't especially apt, since
it conflicts in some important ways with the usual meaning of orthogonal
and diagonal in both chess and mathematics (especially plane geometry) and
(2) suggests a 'rightness' (based on the analogy to standard chess) that
is misguided, a frequent source of confusion, and somewhat stifling for
developing other approaches to hex chess. I therefore feel its a usage
ripe for replacement.

Edit Form

Comment on the page Constitutional Characters

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.