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<h4>CV Descriptions as Literature</h4> Ralph Betza recently complimented on how my page on <A HREF='../other.dir/ruddigore-chess.html'>Ruddigore Chess</A> was written. This led me to think about Ralph's excellent pages for <A HREF='../other.dir/nemoroth.html'>The Game of Nemoroth</A>, and wonder: can an Chess variant's description also be a work of literature? <P> (Let me note that in my view, literature comes in a quite a large range of quality, and piece of writing does not have to be to the standards of F. Scott Fitzgerald or James Joyce to qualify. The fast and loose definition I'm going to use here is that literature is writing of at least reasonable quality, intended to be pleasurable or moving to read. (The intelligentsia may now commence my immolation.)) <P> A possibly analogous situation. One of my two degrees is in geography, and of course I was educated in its history. Until the late 19th Century, Geography (with the exception of Cartography and related disciplines) was primarily a descriptive science, and could be and was looked at as a variety of literature -- the literature of place. A piece of geographic writing was judged almost as much by the quality of its writing as the correctness and completeness of its facts. <p> Chess variants as described in these pages are a combination of rules and description, of algorithm and literature. While I would hardly suggest that the quality of the writing is anywhere near as important as the quality of the rules, yet sometimes the writing is very good. If you search through these pages, you will admittedly, find many bare-bones or clumsy descriptions of Chess variants. Often it is not the fault of the author, who may be laboring with a foreign language, or simply not have time or writing experience for the type of description they would like to produce. And opinions vary; as editor, I have corresponded with authors who prefered a very minimalist presentation of their designs. But still, if you wander through these pages, you will find stories and jokes and puns, references to arts and popular culture, small essays on the processes of designing and playing games, and snatches of biography and history. Sort of a literary smorgasbord. <p> Does all of this additional material add or detract from the rules that are the <I>raison d'etre</I> of the pages in the first place? Do readers like their Chess variants straight, or with a splash of story?