Single Comment

I don't suppose there's a way of linking to the 3‐on‐1 checkmating applet with pieces preselected?

I now set up a  3-vs-1 page that can be preconfigured in the same way as the existing 2-vs-1 page: just add a query string like ?betza=mWcF&name=Steward&img=steward . Unlike the 2-vs-1 page it displays the full statistics table; I think it is better to have the user see it grow to quench his impatience, as for 2-vs-1 it can take rather long.

Currently the page always uses a homogeneous pair of the specified type. This doesn't make it very useful, as there are only very few such pairs that could force checkmate. So perhaps we should make it possible to specify a second piece independently. We could then also link to it from Piececlopedia pages of other minors, selecting a suitable partner together with which it can force mate. E.g. for 'potent' minors it could be a Zebra, for 'semi-potent' minors a Camel, for 'forking' minors a Wazir (or if that is too weak, a Frog), and for minors that lack any useful properties a Modern Elephant.

The Steward is both forking (as only the capture is important for this property) and semi-potent (the W move can switch it attack by one orthogonal step), which is why a pair of them can do it. The mFcW is potent (it can switch its attack from c1 to a1 by moving from c2 to b1), and can thus in principle force mate together with any minor, provided the board is small enough. (The weaker the combination, the smaller the board has to be to drive the bare King into a corner.) With the caveat that is effectively color bound, so a color-bound partner should be on the other shade.

With color bounds it can often be the case that the mate can only be executed on a corner of a specific shade, which effectively makes the board look larger, and thus requires a stronger combination of minors for a given board size. With a pair of unlike mFcW the mate is possible in all corners, which is probably the reason that such a weak combination can still manage it up to 10x10.