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Chess 66. Board based on the 8x8 arrangement - with the difference that 66 fields are now available. (8x8, Cells: 66) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Bn Em wrote on Sun, Nov 13, 2022 09:45 PM UTC in reply to Gerd Degens from Sat Nov 12 04:35 PM:

You can certainly scrap the entire concept.

I'm not sure which part of my comment you took as scrapping anything; certainly that was not the intent. Merely a minor note that your use of the word ‘maximum’ implied a liimitation I don't see

Mind games should be able to be discussed. Or do you have a different opinion?

I fully agree; if I differed in opinion there would be little reason for me continuing to frequent this forum. Did I imply something else?

At the beginning of the discussions, I was of the opinion that switches work differently when they are operated from below, from the side, or from above. I have abandoned this opinion and changed it in favor of a pragmatic solution, in that a switch must be handled the same regardless of the direction.

From what I remember, the discussion was limited specifically to movement via the side of a switch space: your original description allowed (rook) movement from A4 (using Fergus' notation) along the rank to e.g. b4, but not vice versa, breaking the usual assumption that slider moves are reversible. The ‘pragmatic solution’ you refer to was specifically to allow orthogonal slides from/via b4 to reach either of A4 or a4. It might be noted that disallowing all sideways movement from A4 would have achieved the same effect.

As far as I remember entry from the top of a switch, orthogonally or diagonally, was never controversial in this way, and as Fergus has noted unifying downward entry in the same way as for sideways entry leads to exactly the problem of asymmetry that unifying sideways entry was supposed to avoid.