Comments by nelk114

Can confirm it's not showing up; the ID seems to be requesting /graphics.gif (which of course does not exist) rather than /graphics.dir/alfaeriemisc/compounds/wzebrawazir.gif as expected

4D has at least two more symmetrical tilings: Xyrixa‐prism (a line of boards each of which has the same topology as Tetrahedral Chess or OctHex), as well as one that continues the Hex–Xyrixa–??? line which I've wondered about for a while but have never looked into in enough detail. There might also be one or two more in the class of the following.

There is also one more 3D one that Charles never explored (and noöne else seems to have used either), the bitruncated cubic honeycomb. Which corresponds to the other close‐packing of spheres that the Xyrixa geometry doesn't cover.

Unfortunately Charles hasn't been seen here since 2016, so even if he were interested in 4D (which he stated several times that he wasn't) it's unlikely that he'll do much on that front. And even there, the Hybrid Diagonal stuff is already kind of pushed into more‐or‐less expansion article territory.

If you're really interested, of course, you can devise some names yourself :‌)

(Let's hope we never need a Spider-Elephant compound...)

Since Spider is another name for the Alfil-Dabbabah compound, it's not very likely to happen.

But with Spider also in (sparse) use for the Manticore, it's not totally out of the question…

the Deception Chess has removed everything but the title

That's odd; it shows up fine for me

(the gist of it is that each piece has a secret identity (chosen by the owning player) and on your move you can change a still‐disguised piece into its secret counterpart. Pieces have their secret identity revealed on capture, and the secret king is the one that has to be checkmated/captured)

I think you mean more flattened

I'd meant less horizontally flattened, i.e. wider, but yes making it less tall achieves the same and it does look better that way

might seem unrealistic in a composite

I imagine with semi‐abstract iconography like this people tend to be willing (I know I am) to suspend their disbelief a little :‌)

The big omission I see: can an Immortal capture on the move it's brought in with?

While bringing them into the game players have to make sure that they are moved at a safe distance from both Kings, so that no King will be in check

Is this an extra rule? Ensuring your own king won't be in check makes sense, but you've nowhere else suggested that it would be a bad idea to potentially check the opposing king, unless this is supposed to tacitly forbid that

I am not sure if anybody has ever tried before to use chess pieces with hidden identities

The Disguised Pieces tag has a couple games that might be similar; These two probably come closest, though neither goes quite as far as your Immortals

This reasoning seems sound to me

Other (minor) advantages include the usual visual trope (the Pokémon Girafarig comes to mind) that the forward‐facing head is more prominent (the Ram is both bigger than and in front of the Ox), and (super minor, but a nice touch) that the positions of the larger and smaller heads matches that of the original Knight–Camel image (which, incidentally, is used on several (all?) pages featuring the Pushme–Pullyu, not just here)

Would it be worth trying a slightly less flattened Ram? Probably due to the relative roundnesses, it seems to suffer that scaling more than the Ox does

Note that Betza's Twin Tower moves outward forward or backward; i.e. it's the same piece as Jean‐Louis' Ship, and thus shouldn't be able to reach the sW squares at all.

Incidentally, the Twin Tower paragraph has a dangling footnote reference; Greg's edits effaced the original footnote (a jokingly cynical take on World Trade Centre merchandise). Is it worth restoring that (It's probably still on the Internet Archive somewhere), or better to simply remove the footnote reference?

Other possibilities include replacing one side or the other with a Querquisite ((al) or (ar))

By which I assume you mean Quintessence? ;‌)

I'm among those who are not so big on the leaping riders, but I'll admit these are pretty cool. And of course sliding analogues (R or B plus chiral qK) are also possible

I see, I missed it because it's under the heading of Promotion rather than grouped with the description of the (unpromoted) Princess' move. I'd recommend grouping it with the latter; seems to me people are likelier to find it there

‘Mandatory promotion’ simply means deferring promotion isn't allowed, correct?

Have you tested with the (lack of) pawn‐drop‐checkmate rule? Seems to me there'd be a reason (i.e. pawn‐drop checkmates being distastefully frequent) for that to be in Shōgi, and whilst I may be wrong it doesn't look like this game differs so much that that reason would become invalid

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.