Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

This Manticore is really something. It doesn't have the 'potent' property that would allow it to force mate in combination with any piece that can roam the entire board. But it has all the other properties that are useful if the right kind of partner is present. I yet have to find a piece that it cannot force checkmate with:

• It cannot have a W move, because that would make it 'semi-potent', and the Manticore is 'forking'.
• It should also not be able to make a W move in a 3-move tour, for the same reason.
• It cannot have a D move, because that would make it potent by itself.
• It should also not be able to make a D move in a 3-move tour, for the same reason.
• It must not simultaneously attack two squares separated by a D move, because that would make it forking, and the Manticore is semi-potent.
• It should not simultaneously attack two squares separated by an F move, as the Manticore can trap a King on a2-b1.

I thought I had a piece that satisfied all these criteria, in the form of a Crab that was missing one of its moves (fsrbN). But it found a trick to circumvent the normal requirements, by the fact that the N move the Manticore makes is lame, and can be blocked at the W squares. It blocks this move with the Crippled Crab from attacking the corner in a position that otherwise would have been a stalemate, and then deliver a discovered check there.

It seems a lame piece can sometimes do better than a normal leaper!

The editor H. G. Muller has revised this page.

The Save buttons had the wrong formaction value. I corrected this and added some graphics while testing things out.

@Fergus: I tried to add a section about checkmating to this article, but when I use the 'edit contents' link for editors, and try to save it, I run into the error message "file not found".

Perhaps that's where Daniil Frolov got it from?

I've found a few other uses since writing this page (including one in JWB's Meta‐Chess) but haven't yet decided to update it; perhaps some time soon

I just found that Ivan Derzhanski was calling this piece a Dragon in his study made in 2001.

http://www.chessvariants.org/piececlopedia.dir/whos-who-on-8x8.html

This one?: https://www.chessvariants.com/index/listcomments.php?id=33008

I happened to be reading this thread recently so it's still freshish in my memory

the comment search is broken

Yes, and it won't be fixed anytime soon. It requires MariaDB 10, but because of some problems this site was having with MariaDB 10, I downgraded to MariaDB 5 and manually edited the database to remove features exclusive to MariaDB 10. So, even though we are running MariaDB 10 on the backup site, it lacks support for comment search, because its database is just a backup of the one here. For the present, I don't dare update the Linux software on this site, because if the server shuts down, which it sometimes does to complete some updates, I cannot reboot it. Also, the backup server is using Rocky Linux, while the main server is stuck with CentOS 7 for the time being. Since I paid for this server for a year, I plan to keep it until near the time to renew. And if the hosting service doesn't shape up soon, I may jump ship to the backup site and find another host for a new backup site.

(the comment search is broken)

I once read a comment by HG Muller avout how this piece van reach every square bishops can reach that are orthogonally next to it. But where is that Comment?

I've done one last (hopefully, for now) update to this page, incorporating H. G.'s suggestion about the ‘Contra‐’ prefix, and a caveat about Mideast Chess' Cavalier. I'll henceforth probably leave this page alone for now.

Thank you. I understand. I have asked Hans, maybe he will remember. Maybe not, we will see.

In next future, I will try to obtain the correspondance between Gollon and Cohen.

Your comment said that RennChess was “a follow up of Mideast Chess” — if so then it would make sense that Eric would not keep the Cavalier's name but change the move. Thus his understanding of Mideast probably agreed with Pritchard, which would mean that Gollon also agreed (in both sources, if different). In that case Hans' page has an error introduced either by a typo from Eric, or by Hans.

Given that that move is probably erroneous, it makes sense to either remove the reference, or keep it but with a note that it's probably in error. In the latter case, calling it “Hans' account” could risk reflecting badly on him, even though (of course) that is not the intent. Fwiw, “These pages' account” risks the same directed at ourselves(!), while “one account” or “some accounts” is quite unspecific (and the latter may be incorrect if ours is the only such).

Hope that's clearer — English is very much one of my mother tongues (though sometimes I wonder whether it'd be more interesting if it weren't), as is indirection/terseness it would seem ;)

@Bn Em. I fear a miscommunication. Sorry, English is not my mother language, you sentence is long and not direct enough for my poor English >> I"m not sure about what you mean.

What I know or understand:

• Cavalier in Renn Chess, Greenwood: is F-then-R or R-then-F, but not an adjacent
• Cavalier in Mideast according to Pritchard: it is the same than above.
• Cavalier in Mideast according to Hans: is F-then-R or W-then-B, but not an adjacent

I said that Greenwood took the Cavalier from Mideast, and this is true only if Pritchard is right and Hans is wrong. Pritchard seemed to be quite certain of what he wrote because he said that then the Cavalier has always two paths to reach a square.

My point is not an offense to my friend Hans, of course.

Maybe worth to mention that there are two versions of the move depending on the source.

Thanks, Fergus!

@Jean‐Louis: Hmm, in that case it does seem like Hans was in error, esp. if, as you say, RennChess was a followup to Mideast which would suggest that Greenwood had the (putatively) correct description. It may be worth taking the reference back out then given that the otherwise necessary explicit caveat regarding Hans' account might reflect unnecessarily harshly.

@H. G.: Fair; I'll put that in the notes section. Do you think it's worth generally adopting Gilman's additional ‘Double’ term as well for the Duke?

I also remembered one more variant featuring the manticore as iirc a knight upgrade, but haven't found it again [Edit: just found it], and I also found this one with a lame double‐ski (i.e. at least 3‐square) manticore move as one form of the ‘mutating serpent’. Oþoh I feel like this page may well be more than comprehensive enough as it is(!)

Also since I expect to make at least one more revision of this, I seem to remember there's a preference for relative urls in intra‐site links; am I correct in thinking that those are the same as absolute ones but without the leading https://www.chessvariants.com?

I went into the database to change the ItemID to MSmanticore and to change the name to Manticore. I unhid the page, made it part of the Piececlopedia, and changed the inventor from the author to Ralph Betza.

That page is fine. Just a detail when it is mentioned the Mideast chess account from John Gollon. As the matter of fact, Mideast C is not covered in the famous Gollon's book. It was said that this game and Pacific C. were detailed in draft from Gollon partly sent to Eric Greenwood in 1976; who communicated this to Hans Bodlaender in 1997.

I have never seen this draft. The source used by Pritchard was a correspondance between John Gollon and Philip Cohen. Was it the same thing? It could be.

I would be inclined to think that the good description was from Pritchard, which revised his text for his second book (Classified ECV), and that the text composed by Hans had an unwanted error.

I would be very interested to look at these correspondances if someone has them.

Interestingly, someone told me on Facebook that a piece playing as F then R and W then B was called a Godzilla by another inventor.

Still one remark:

The 'time-reversed' version of the Grasshopper is listed under the name Contra-Grasshopper. I wonder if we should not adopt that terminology in general, and refer to the 'Transcendental Prelate' a Contra-Manticore.

Since my only reservation with Manticore was that it is without precedent in games, and the Editors seem fine with the exception in this case, Manticore is fine with me too. I've updated the page to refer to it so unless Ben strongly objects this is probably the near‐final version.

I've also made a few additional tweaks and added some extra uses: Jörg Knappen's Seeping Switchers and the Gryphon compound in (Gollon's, though according to Jean‐Louis in another comment not Pritchard's, account of) Mideast Chess.

@Ben: Thanks for the reminder about Botterill inventing the Prelate — that had completely passed through my mind and I hadn't read through the article again while drafting this. Also I've added Aanca, as well as the other two names used both for the modern piece and by more than one person, to the first paragraph.

@Jean‐Louis: Thanks, that's good to know. Plenty of interesting material there indeed (though I was already familiar with your GA page :) ). No doubt I shall have to take a look into the Musser translation when I have a bit more free time

As far as I can tell, that leaves this page substantially complete. Any remaining remarks?

Ben, Bn, and H.G. are interested parties who have not yet voted.

Well, I don't really care much what its is called on this page. So Manticore is fine with me. In Team-Mate Chess I will keep using the name Acromantula.

So far, we have three votes for Manticore and no other votes. Ben, Bn, and H.G. are interested parties who have not yet voted. If they're agreeable to Manticore, then we will have a consensus.

I do agree with some of H.G.'s reasons for going with Aanca, but I think the main factor in how many people will read this page is how much it gets linked to from games using this piece.

I vote Manticore

I'd vote for manticore, too!

Among the two I vote Manticore.

This page is nicely written. I answer to this: "I've referred to the Alfonso X text as the Libro de los Juegos, but I can't track down where I found that name and other sources call it different things; anyone (Jean‐Louis?) have any pointers re this?"

Indeed, the book has several titles, it is not like a modern book with a title on the cover. Moreover it is composed of several parts, which are called "libro" (book) themselves. "Libro de los Juegos" (Book of games) is correct however and can be used.

The WP page is good (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libro_de_los_juegos) or there is also my website (http://history.chess.free.fr/acedrex.htm). An excellent page introducing to the translated text and the PhD of Sonja Musser is here: https://www.ancientgames.org/alfonso-xs-book-games-libro-de-los-juegos/