Comments by BobGreenwade

Just a few notes:

• The Kirin listing describes the Phoenix move; I think you did a copy-and-paste and forgot to edit (as I often do).
• I'm a little confused by the description of the "stinging moves." I get the part about making a capture and then moving to an adjacent space other than the space of origin, but I do not understand the other option.
• Which of these pieces are your own creation? A lot of them look interesting, though I see a fair bit of overlap in names with existing pieces in my collection (though to be fair most of those pieces are fairly obscure).

As someone constantly hunting for new (to me) and interesting pieces, this is a veritable treasure trove. It's a delightful listing of Shogi pieces. I don't know where Part 2 would draw its matereial, but I'd love to see more!

I don't see the error you are referring to. Maybe try refreshing your browser cache?

The Phoenix description says: "The Phoenix jumps to the second square in any diagonal direction or moves one square in any orthogonal direction. (WA)"

The Kirin description says: "The Kirin jumps to the second square in any diagonal direction or moves one square in any orthogonal direction. (FD)"

I'm pretty sure the Kirin jumps to the second square in any orthogonal direction, or moves one square in any diagonal direction. At least, that's what I'm used to seeing, and what the FD tells me.

OK, unless I've missed something, I think this one's ready to go.

61. Muezzin. and 62. Cantaloupe. These are two pieces that compound the Camel with fourth-perimeter pieces.

The name of Muezzin was proposed by Charles Gilman for the Camel and Giraffe, as someone who is "high off the ground in lands with camels." In the real world, the Muezzin makes the call for prayer from a mosque's minaret (tower). (CFX)

The piece's design is based on a photograph of a minaret.

For the compound of Camel with Antelope, all I could come up with was the portmanteau of the two words: Cantaloupe. (I do seem to have a habit of making portmanteau names for compound pieces; see the Gerbil and Anteater.) (CNY)

I think the piece design is pretty self-explanatory.

If you really want to lean into that, you could borrow some pieces from Scheherazade and/or Desert Dust. But if you go that route, make only the Pawns explosive.

I've now completed an Expansion Set for Pawns (because I've hit my limit for open submissions again, so I can't work on new games).

I have, yes. I still need to fix a few pieces' moves, though, as well as get familiar enough with GC to put it in.

Considering that (as I just noted in my latest update on my Dealer's Chess submission) I've hit my limit on new submissions for now, this might be a good time to start doing those things.

Can I assume the corner cells are deleted so you don't have to work out what to do with the diagonals there?

Yes, you can, and correctly so -- especially with the leapers! (I've seen others try to manage that mess, and those were just cubical boards. On a tesseract? No, thank you!)

If a pawn or spear find themselves on an Open face, there are two (or all four, on faces 6 and 19!) directions that are "toward" the enemy Home face; how do they move then?

That would be based on where on the face they are. If they're at the midpoint, it's player's choice (I probably should include that in the text).

Playing on the 2d surface has the nicety of rook lines still actually restricting the enemy king into one side or the other. What does mating material look like here?

I'm not sure I understand the question.

I tried to work out (but without paper) how many squares a rook attacks on an empty board. There are 12 faces that it reaches in each direction, but those overlap, I think four faces in common? So it should be 5*12*2-4-1=115 (that last being the rook's current cell)? What about the bishop, or nightrider?... Oh, I guess bishops aren't colorbound?

That math/geometry is a bit wild, and it's a bit late right now (for me).

But yes, the Bishops are not colorbound, strictly speaking. It's not possible, on a cube's corner (much less a tesseract's), to have a colorbound check pattern. I didn't realize that when I put four on each side, but then I decided that it wasn't that big of a deal; switching is a trick that requires rounding a corner.

Is there a reasonable way to flatten this for displaying on a table/screen? (I suspect not, because of the forking of paths.)

You're correct, and that's only one reason; the nature of a tesseract makes it hard in general to lay it out in two dimensions. Someone could probably do a diagram showing the Home Faces and how they connect to the Territory Faces, and the latter to each other, for each side; how to extend that to the entire tesseract is another question entirely.

That said, I have seen people program 4D and even 5D Rubik's cubes, so it's probably possible.

Does the setup section's use of "clockwise" actually make sense?

Clockwise as seen by the player on the 2D board.

Now that I consider it, I probably should set up some kind of system where two corners are blacked-out and two are whited-out, to keep track of which corners are connected. That won't always be obvious.

Why alternate ordinary and berolina pawns? Doesn't that hurt pawn structures? (Does it just not matter on this wacky board?)

They should only run into each other in their early moves, and even then only if they make single moves at the start instead of double moves.

Personally, I think it doesn't so much hurt "pawn structures" as just make for different ones that would have to be worked out in play. That said, I don't think I'd do it that way on a board without this structure's unique flavors.

I've been contemplating the idea of bent riders that make 135-degree turns; the Vivi already has one of these, taking one Wazir step back and then moving forward like a Bishop (one step forward then forward like a Bishop also being an option). A piece I call the Double-Cross moves one step sideways, then turns around to move like a Bishop, and of course that's just the beginning.

Anyway, I'm seeing some decent uses for the Annoyances; like the Vivi, they can be decent pieces in the row right behind the Pawns on large-board games.

(I'm also thinking of experimenting with some 180-degree turns.)

The bracket notation for bent sliders doesn't handle fourth and higher perimeters well.

(No big worries; I can just enter the third-perimeter equivalent, let it translate to conventional XBetza, and extrapolate from that.)

63. Cicada. As promised, most of this week will be dedicated to those pieces whose physical designs that have given me trouble, with results that are... well, OK, they're barely good enough for me to even upload. The pieces are great on the board; the physical designs, not so much. Suggestions on how to make them better are more than welcome.

I found the Cicada in Adrian King's massive game Jupiter. It can move to, but not capture in, any adjacent space; or leap two or three spaces in any radial direction, but it has to jump over another piece. (mKjAjDjGjH)

To be honest, the diagram could use a little help too.

As for the design, the wings came out better than I expected, but the overall effect just doesn't say "insect" to me, much less "cicada." On this current look at it, I can see that bringing the bezel up around the head would help, but that's not quite a full solution.

For starters, can two rooks force mate against a lone king? If the corners weren't removed I think they could. Two queens probably suffice? Maybe it's best to see if this has been resolved on the surface of a 3D cube first...

I don't think that two Rooks could force mate against a lone King without a board's edge to work with, whether it's a tesseract, cube, toroid, or whatever. Granted, the blanked-out corners might give a little extra leverage if this were a cube, but I'm pretty sure the split seams of the tesseract would always allow the King an escape.

On the other hand, two Queens could probably sandwich a King into the middle of a Face to force a mate -- at least a stalemate, if not checkmate. I think a Queen probably could do it with the Chancellor, though I'm not sure about the Archbishop.

I'd like to try to work out a bishop's path (and number of attacked squares) partly for this reason: it might be possible to effectively wrap around corners by going the long-long way around?...

Well, I can follow at least one path of a Bishop using the flat diagram: on an empty structure, the one that starts at 1.c5 can proceed to 1.c5, 2.d1, 2.e2, 4.a3, 4.b4, 4.c5, etc. (or the same numbering on Faces 7 and 9); or, continuing from 2.e2, to 14.c5, 14.b4, 14.a3; or, from 7.e2, to 14.e3, 14.d2, 14.c1...

Without mapping out the whole thing, I'm pretty sure just about any position allows a Bishop to cover eight of the 21 spaces on each side -- either a2, a4, b1, b5, d1, d5, e2, and e4; or a3, b2, b4, c1, c5, d2, d4, and e3 -- plus up to two additional spaces on the Face where it starts. The exception is the center square, where it's limited to one space in each direction.

"Wrapping the corner" would not be possible in a single move.

But I'm not sure that makes sense, in the same way that clockwise isn't unambiguous in 3D: it depends on from which side of the surface you're looking.

Well, there's an inside and an outside. I'm pretty sure the Faces are arranged so that they're all viewed from the tesseract's outside (I can check on that, though).

Just for general reference, I thought I'd go through the page and sort out all of the letters currently used in the code:

A - Alfil (2,2)
B - Bishop (FF)
C - Camel (1,3)
D - Dabbabah (0,2)
F - Ferz (1,1)
G - Tripper (3,3)
H - Threeleaper (0,3)
I - Imitator
J - alt Zebra
K - King (WF)
L - alt Camel
N - Knight (1,2)
O - Castling
Q - Queen (BR = FFWW)
R - Rook (WW)
U - Univeral leaper
W - Wazir (0,1)
X - +3 ortho
Y - +2 diag
Z - Zebra (2,3)

a - again
b - backward
c - capture
d - destroy (friendly capture)
e - en passant
f - forward
g - grasshop
h - half
i - initial (or “iso” in a sequence)
ii - initial (where any such piece starts)
j - jumping
k - king (delivers check)
l - left
m - move only
n - non-jumping
nn - non-jumping, allows en passant
o - cylinder (l/r)
oo - toroid (l/r & f/b)
p - hop
q - circular (rotates direction)
r - right
s - sideways
u - unload (position switch)
v - vertical
x - excite (move induction)
y - fork (in a sequence)
z - zigzag

I ignored the bracket mode and such things that aren't really codified yet (as much as I look forward to that).

64. Otter. This is another Arian King creation, and one that I think has some decent potential. It can move one step directly forward or in any diagonal direction, or four spaces to the left or right.

I could easily see this as a mid- to late-game defender, moving around to block captures or to defend other pieces. In a game with three or more rows of setup, I'd gladly see this in the second row...

...unless, of course, it looked like this. It's supposed to suggest the familiar sight of an otter floating on its back, but if anyone reading this realized that before I said it then I'm very surprised. I'm at a loss as to what would be better, though.

Understood! That's a pretty good abbreviation for mcoabNdabuN, then.

And now I'll go fix the Castling on Short Sliders, to how it should be....

But if a certain piece always goes in relation of White (say, an "East Wind" that always points toward White's left), that would use symmetry=rotate for the piece?

And now I'm really liking that Heavenly Horse... ;)

I'm considering adding a rule that any Pawn or Scorpion may make a move and then immediately "promote" to a Pyramid (cannot move, cannot be moved, cannot be captured). This would only be allowed once per game for each player, presumably to block a sliding capture where otherwise the opponent would respond by capturing the Pawn (or Scorpion), leaving the player in the same pickle but minus the captured piece, or to create a handy near-edge environment for cornering a lone King, though there could be other reasons as well.

The main problem with it is that I'm not sure I could code this in the Interactive Diagram.

Jean-Louis:

A question for piece hunters here. Does anyone have ever seen a WAN and a FDN played in any chess variant? Although being rather "simple", I can't remember having seen them somewhere. If they exist, what is their names? Thanks

In case it makes a difference, I finally got around to making a Raccoon (FDN) and Horned Lizard (WAN). They'll eventually find their way into a Dealer's Chess Expansion Set, and probably an "American Prairie" (or American Civil War) type game my brain's been brewing.