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The Gnu is a piece that combines the movement possibilities of the Knight and Camel, and named after an African ungulate. It has been used in fairy chess problems - in 1939, a mate in two problem with a Gnu by W. Karsch was published in Fairy Chess Review, but I do not know if this is the first appearance of the piece. The Gnu also occurs in several large variants on these pages including Ganymede Chess and Io Chess by Mark Hedden; and Bachelor Kamil, Ecumenical Chess, and Wildeurasian Qi by Charles Gilman. It appears under the name Wildebeest, another name for the same animal, in Wildebeest Chess by Wayne Schmittberger and Promo Chess by Glenn Overby.
The gnu can either move two squares in one orthogonal direction and then one in the other orthogonal direction, (like a knight), or three squares in one orthogonal direction and then one in the other orthogonal direction (a stretched knights-move). When moving, the gnu jumps, i.e., the move can be completed regardless whether the intervening squares are occupied. Like the King, it is a triangulating compound. That is to say, its longer move is equivalent to two of its shorter ones at right angles, so that it can return to a cell in three moves, in this case a Camel move and two Knight moves. In contrast neither the Knight nor the Camel can return to a square in an odd number of moves.
The Gnu can move to any square with a black circle, regardless whether squares he passes over are occupied or not.
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Created on: May 30, 1999. Last modified on: January 04, 2001.
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Last modified: Monday, December 22, 2008
