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Concise Guide to Chess Variants. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, Jan 7, 2012 07:52 AM UTC:

Knight+Zebra is definitely Gazelle in all the contexts that I've read before. A piece moving according to which FIDE piece's file it is on is listed in Piececlopedia as a Zelig.
One useful feature to add would be to distinguish usage in actual variants from problematist names largely ignored hy varint designers. For example, Prince is one of the commoner names used for a capturable Wazir+Ferz compound. (Did you see what I did there?) I do not recall any variant in which it is used for Knight+Wazir. Likewise Outback Chess uses Kangaroo is used for Knight+Elephant - and to answer a question on another thread I qualify the compound of the Xiang Qi counterparts as a 'Chinese-style' Kangaroo in my vartiant Xiangaroo - but no variant uses it for a Queenwise hopper requiring two intrervening pieces.
The mention of further amphibian names I find riveting. I could have done with this info many years earlier. Now that Toad and Newt have been brought to my attention it seems sensible that I use them. As far as I am aware no-one used Treader, and Toad even has the T and D in it! Rosette I have used but am prepared to replace throughout with Newt. This has four further consequences for Man and Beast:
1 If Toad exists alongside Frog it makes nonsense of Tadpole being specifically an FO Frog. Therefore I will rename that piece as part of a grouping.
2 The name Newt ignores its piece's link to the Rose, and so all the other prefixed and suffixed Roses will be dropped. So will extrapolated names such as Macette, Bezette, et cetera. This will clear out several apparently uninspiring names.
3 Cubic boards add other amphibian radial pieces with maximum coordinate 3: Ferz+Viceroy, Viceroy+Trebuchet, Viceroy+Tripper, Trebuchet+Eunuch, Ferz+Zombie. Any ideas for names for these? Which other amphibian names have been used and which not?
4 Compounds of a twice- and a thrice-coprime piece were moved from page 6 to page 11 of Man and Beast to be after the Rose, Macel, et cetera themselves. It would make sense to reverse this when I drop the Rosette theme altogether and put them back in page 6 to group all the amphibians together.