Single Comment

(Joyce's Philosophy should look at ''DtA'') Mark Thompson in 1996 ''Defining the Abstract'' applies to games four criteria: clarity, depth, drama, decisiveness. The same evaluative nouns could even be applied to pieces by themselves. I like Lavieri's Altair as Excellent within CVPage but would not recommend it to IAGO and Hutnik because of lack of clarity in some piece-types. Grand-Bishop moves like Bishop and also jumps like Tripper(3,3) and also has non-capturing one-step Wazir here. Like most Altair pieces, it has still additional movement along a rank and up or back three ranks with qualifications. Pretty obscure mechanics for wide acceptance, only having mind-bending depth for the fun of it. Sequential pieces have been invented and reinvented, like Joyce's Bent Hero and Bent Shaman (I rated Lemurian Shatranj high for good new combination not for re-invention) and they all have somewhat troubling clarity issues. Now Lavieri's Reducer, a one-step-delimiting Immobilizer is within this fine Altair too and is natural enough for 2-D anyway. Reducer could be among standard 25 variant pieces for IAGO. Whereas multi-path Dragon five-stepping presents lessened clarity; the full potential is already achieved by minimal-four-path Scorpion. It may be every so-called planar piece, the fad of the last week, worth considering lacks clarity, yet to be ascertained. We may never do justice to all the over 1000 piece-types in Frank Truelove's list from Pritchard, let alone Gilman's 1000 more documented. Two-path Rook being attributed to Witham in Joyce's present instigating comments is already invented long ago shows Pritchard 'ECV'. So it goes, being impossible to hold a fraction the whole field in mental sweep dispassionately. Rococo's Chameleon lacks clarity: what do to when a CV has only some one disturbing element?