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Two-player Quadraphage(square-eater), inventor David Silverman 1948. Moving second, if q=4 (four squares eliminated each move), one-step King from 'center'(or one of four central squares), with object to reach edge, can be 'captured' in no more than three moves on all boards 5x5 or greater. If q=3, King can be trapped on boards 6x6 up. If q=2, King escapes(with good play) on 7x7, but trapped 8x8 up. If q=1, with only one square removed each turn, can King always escape? Answer: No. On board 32x32 King escapes with best play. Starting at size 33x33, there is a strategy to remove 1 square at a time so that King is lost, never reaching edge. Of course there could be CPage variates ad infinitum. Supposing King is Wazir, then King can be trapped on 8x8 with q=1. Suppose piece is Bishop on an infinite board but finite move up to say a billion squares. If q=3, Bishop is clearly trapped(just seal the arrival squares); in fact, q=1 traps a Bishop or Rook on an infinite (square) board, in a difficult strategy. However 'q=1' enables Queen to make finite moves there forever. Does 'q=2'?
Piece-values: for pieces of Rook value+, first find Pawn-equivalence. 8 K___P___P___P___P___P___P___P A = Angel, leaps to any square reached 7 P___P___P___P___P___P___P___P in n King moves(Conway), n=7 8x8 6 P___P___P___P___P___P___P___P P = Black Pawns Why 'any value> 5 P___P___P___P___P___P___P___P 1.0' & then assign 60.0? Because A 4 P___P___P___P___P___P___P___P on 8x8 sets up in illegal position(!) 3 P___P___P___P___P___P___P___P and so not properly rated. Arriving 2 P___P___P___P___P___P___ ___a anyway at '60 pts.': 60 Black Pawns, 1 P___P___P___P___P___P___P___k White goes first h2-f8 Checkmate. a b c d e f g h If instead Black moves first, g3-g2 Check (ignoring activation of Angel's simultaneous check by special rule that Angel must move) and after h2xg2, f3xg2, capturing Angel, Black is to win. So equivalence of 60(or 59)Pawns and one Angel(58 or 60) 8 P___P___P___P___K___P___P___P Unlike Angel, Angel-prime(n=6) is bona 7 P___P___P___P___P___P___P___P fide piece on 8x8. Legal initial, 6 P___P___P___P___P___P___P___P no promotion of course. 47 Pawns beat 5 P___P___P___P___P___P___P___P A-p and King, but remove several 4 P___P___P___P___P___P___P___P forward Pawns and A-prime soon finds 3 P___P___P___P___P___P___P___P a square six removed from King, 2 ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ checkmate, proving A-p 39-41 points. 1 ___ ___ ___a___k___ ___ ___
What goes around comes around. Which is more Elegant formalization below? More generalizable, or uplifting, or just clearer? And where is the attribution? Invented in 1970's, Conway's Angel leaps to any square reachable by n King moves. With n = 7, Angel covers 8x8 board; a specific square(4,6) is one at opposite corner of '4,6 rectangle' -- Charles Gilman's 'Gimel'. Thus, CVPage, ever recycling known quantities, by Gilman's 'From Ungulates Outward' transposes problem-theme Classic Angel into following (including non-pre-established names): 12 Wazir, 22 Ferz, 13 Dabbabah, 23 Knight, 33 Alfil, 13 Trebouchet, 24 Camel, 34 Zebra, 25 Giraffe, 35 Satyr, 45 Antelope, 46 Gimel, 56 Rector, 27 Flamingo, 67 Parson, 44 Tripper, 55 Commuter, 66 Quitter, 14 Cobbler, 15 Quibbler; also unnamed 16, 26, 36, 17, 37, 47, 57, 77.
To make Blue Queen playable game and more than thought experiment, just stipulate Blue-painted Queen cannot capture a Pawn unless attacked by that Pawn. Invented 1950's, Blue Queen moves like mad Queen, starts at one of the four central squares, and belongs to whichever side is currently moving. The limited Pawn prohibition and otherwise Queen-normality should make nice game akin to Lavieri's Promoter Chess, but Blue Queen presumably equally helps as hurts(hey symmetry). Interesting. Finding proliferation extremely offensive, we just file this variate here.
Where are J K Lewis' piece values, Joe? It helps to familiarize with Ralph Betza's 'Ideal & Practical Values I-VI'. How many years went into those 2001 articles, now a covenant? Later lists just build on Betza variables from 1990's and 1980's. However, Betza likes to compare pieces pairwise not whole CVs. In system to point-count entire game, available so far are elementary (1) Use unit Pawns 1.0, or 1.1 (2) Where practicable, Rook value & up, ignoring the other pieces, put piece X on empty board with 2 Kings and opposite-colour Pawns, and shuffle them around until finding Pawn-equivalence. These end-game positions are Joyce's reproducible 'many positions' versus '1 specific position'. Who should win to left? Trying 10, or 30, positions, we are interested in typical not __ __ __ __ __ __ __ extreme cases with few pieces/pawns. Its experts __ __ __ __K__ __ __ know who wins, but move one or two Pawns at a __ __ __ __P__ __ __ time one or two spaces, and it goes the other __ __P__P__ __P__P__ way. Pawn Equivalence, Rook = 5.0. There are __ __ __ __ __ __ __ in mad-Queen (40+40 points)/ 64 squares __ __ __ __ __ __ __ = 80/64 = 1.25. Should we always distribute __r__ __ __k__ __ __ points so that there are approximately 1.25 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ the number of squares? So CVs may be like Bridge hands: the total point-count for bidding in system of all four 13-card hands includes 40 high-card points plus short-suit counts of 5 or 10 or 12 more: 52 points/52 cards = 1.0. [Whole history of Bridge postdates Capablanca Chess]
Blue Queen becomes playable with the proviso that Blue Queen can only capture a Pawn threatening her. Blue Queen cannot actually be captured even by a Pawn threatening her. Of course, there is no capture of Blue Queen at all simply because the one Blue Queen belongs to the player currently moving. So, the 'Pawn threat' is hypothetical, based on Pawn's one-step diagonal-forward capture, with respect to the present position of Blue Queen. It prevents easy Pawn captures. Otherwise BQ moves like normal mad Queen including piece captures, checks and checkmate. Second mini-Rule is there can be no two-fold repetition. Two-fold repetition is not Draw, just dis-allowed and another move must be made instead. This prevents shuffling Blue Queen back and forth, but must also apply to moves not involving BQ, so caution for end-games. Those two requirements should move Blue Queen from thought experiment in games journal(originating 1950's) to playable game.
Besides Maharajah and Sepoys, Martin Gardner books of S.A. columns have
many Chess examples. MG features this one by Lord Dunsany, who drew
Capablanca in simultaneous exhibition 1920's. White (small letters) to
R__N__B__K__Q__B__N__R play and mate in four. This is legal position
P__P__P__P__P__P__P__P that could occur in actual play of mad-Queen,
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ 'FIDE', Chess.
__ __ __ __ __ __ __
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ kcalB no gnieb ton neeuQ kcalB :noitanalpxE
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ kcalB os, devom evah K & Q snaem erauqs
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ morf noitisop tneserp rieth dehcaer snwaP
r__n__b__q__k__b__n__r .draob fo edis rehto
h g f e d c b a Therefore (actually Move 40, or 60),
1 N-d7
If ...N-h3, mate in two more moves.
If ...N-f3, mate in three more moves.Abdul-Rahman's 'one best Decimal(100 squares)' temporarily put on hold, these are 28 Excellent Large CVs, 72+: Rococo, Maxima; Altair, Jacks & Witches; 3-Player Chess(patent), Big Board, Gridlock(satire), Eight-Stone, Sissa; the following historical ones, Carrera's (since its derivatives get the attention), Courier, Grande Acedrex, Gala, Jetan, Novo; Centennial, Cagliostro's, Chess on a Really Big Board, Leaping/Missing Bat, Quintessential, Hanga Roa, AltOrth Hex, Ecumenical, Achernar, 4 Armies, Giant King, Insect, Nomic(various).
Maybe worth trying: You can not move Blue Queen twice in a row. [Or maybe you can't three times in a row.]
Thanks Jeremy. I was thinking maybe the opposite: mandatory move one piece/pawn PLUS move Blue Queen. That solves annoying keeping track of two-fold repetition too. So two moves each side per turn, still stipulating no Pawn capture by Blue Queen without being attacked by same. That maybe keeps Rules simple as possible, and player can concentrate on strategy. (Incidentally, that would be our overriding critique of the newer mini-era of 2003-2006 Gilman-Joyce-Gifford upstarts: slightly too many Rules per game (by just one or two or three) detract with player's having constantly to re-interpret Rules, in turn dimming stratego-tactical concentration; needless to say, that never happened in the RBetza era circa 1985-2002.)
I like your idea even better. I'm playing a game like that right now, an excellent one called Active King Chess. It's FIDE except each time you have to move your king in addition to other pieces, and there is a ko rule.
So, anyone's prerogatives here being to post even average work and also to evaluate, Joe Joyce's three CVs appear respectively in the lowest pentile(Falcon King), fourth pentile(Chieftain), and middle pentile(GS), out of total 4000 CVs (1000 of them being Large CVs). Before he left, Fergus Duniho criticized CVPage's own Recognized list for inclusion of some 'Acclaimed' ones, as Crazy38s etc. JJoyce and others have also panned CVP Recognized 35-40 for being obsolescent, new listings suspended again for two years. In fact, so-called 'Recognized', though historically interesting, are practically worthless as quality-CV markers. Its list is short on Large Chesses, and at least two, Grand and Omega, are among the very 'Poor', the lowest decile (10%). Of course, some out of the 40 are 'Excellent', as in most any random sample. Maybe all forty would average 6.8 out of 10. The following now add to our last Comment this thread (before Blue Queen), the three large CVs(>= 72 squares): Tetrahedral(2003), Weave & Dungeon(2002), Jester(1999). Previously, these our own selections had all-large-CVs Rococo, Maxima, Jacks & Witches, 3-Player, Gridlock(satire), Eight-Stone, Sissa, Carrera's(the first of its kind), Courier, Grand Acedrex, Gala, Jetan(science fiction also), Novo, Centennial, Chess Really Big Board, Leaping/Missing Bat, Quintessential, AltOrthHex, Ecumenical, Achernar, Altair, Hanga Roa, 4 Armies, Giant King, Insect, Nomic(various). A few, just about as good, are now casually dropped; and also couple of historical ones were really already 'Recognized', creating some overlap(as CVPage overlaps Pritchard's 'ECV'). These are put forth as falling in the top two pentiles anyway, not all necessarily Excellent, making all-around average 7.5-8.9, above the CVPage's democratically-chosen lowest-common-denominator type of inclusions.
For fun, we wonder what is average of CVP 'Recognized' list of 39. For comparisons, we hold in mind, loosely or closely, most of 4000 CVs here, and many others from 'ECV' and Patents, by having skimmed or studied them. Unavoidably, subjectivity intrudes any such educated evaluation, for ex., some liking Shogi to which we are averse for complex Rules. Standards vary by novelty, historicity, priority, playability and 10-100 other factors occurring. Hey not exact Science. 8.0-10 Excellent, 6.0-7.9 Good... Result: Chess 9.9, Xiangqi 9.6, Shogi 5.5, Alice 8.3 (1950s), Berolina 8.5 (1920s), Korean 9.0 (presuming X. pre-dates), Courier 9.5, Glinski 8.2 (1930s), Kriegspiel 9.0 (1890s), Losing 5.6, Marseillais 7.3, Pocket Knight 6.0, Progressive 7.4, Raumschach 9.3 (19-aughts still best 3d), Avalanche 6.3, Bughouse 7.0, C.Different.Armies 9.0 (1970s), Crazyhouse 5.1, Extinction 6.9, FRC 5.3 (not original), Grand 1.0, Hostage 6.1, Minishogi 5.7, Omega 2.1, Smess 8.2 (commercial), Ultima 8.8, Wildebeest 8.0 (1980s), AntiKingII 5.7 (not original), Crazy38s 4.1, FlipC&FShogi 6.7, Magnetic 8.0, McCooeysHex 6.3 (1970s), PocketMutation 1.7, Shatranj 9.5, Chaturanga4Players 9.5, Tamerlane 8.9, Los Alamos 8.8 (1950s computer), DragonChess 8.4, Trid(Star Trek) 8.5(latter two with well-known connection). The all-around average is 7.1, having previously speculated 6.8, solidly in the 'Good' category.
Pietro Carrera died in 1646, and in the 1680's the Cafe de la Regence was
founded in Paris. Intellectuals Voltaire, Rousseau, Ben Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte visited the coffeehouse over the years, where ''the game of
Chess is played best'' according to Diderot. There in 1783 Wolfgang von
Kempelen brought for public demonstration the chess player automaton: The Turk. The Turk could perform Knight's Tours faster even than the great Francois-Andre Danican Philidor, author of 'Analyse du jeu des Echecs'. Franklin there as signatory to the Treaty of Paris ending American Revolution, lost a game played to the freestanding Turk. Though winning, Philidor was terrified in principle of a chess-playing machine. Savants' articles in the journal for the French Academy of Sciences speculated that the cylinder inside must encode ''sets of preprogrammed chess moves.''
''As it made each move, the Turk's gloved left hand moved over the board so that it was positioned above a particular chessman. Its fingers would then close to grasp the piece and move it to another square (or off the board entirely). After making each move, the automaton rested its arm on the cushion, at which point the sound of whirring clockwork would cease. The Turk moved its head under certain circumstances during the game. After a move endangering its opponent's Queen, the Turk would nod its head twice; and when placing the King in check, it would nod three times. Every ten or twelve moves Kempelen returned to the left-hand side of the cabinet to wind up the clockwork mechanism.'' --Tom Standage, 'The Turk' 2002 Year 1783 also saw in southern France the first-ever successful demonstration of flight in a hot-air balloon.Still 1783, in London, expert Philip Thicknesse's article in the 'Monthly Review' declares, ''That an Automaton may be made to move its hand, its head, and its eyes, in certain and regular motions, is past all doubt; but that an AUTOMATON can be made to move the Chessmen properly, as a pugnacious player, in consequence of the preceding move of a stranger, who undertakes to play against it, is UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE. Wolfgang von Kempelen's machine, when he is stripped of his Turkish robes, turned out of his splendid apartment, deprived of the serious deportment of all the parties, and parade of admittance, is a simple trick.'' [No one much agreed.] ''By diversionary tactics, the display of the Turk's clockwork innards was ingenious device to delude observers that every spectator should think he was secretly controlling the automaton by some incomprehensible and invisible powers, according to the preceding move of the stranger who plays; and he places himself close to the right elbow of the Turk, previous to its move; then puts his left hand into his coat pocket, and by an awkward kind of motion, induces most people to believe that he has a magnet concealed in his pocket, by which he can direct the movement of the Turk's arm. Add to this, that he has a cabinet on a side-table, which he now and then unlocks and locks, a candle burning, and a key to wind up the Automaton; all of which are merely to puzzle the spectators. The real mover is concealed in the Counter, which is quite large enough (exclusive of the clockwork) to contain a child of ten years of age, who could play well by using a mirror or see all the moves through the Turk's habit.'' --All above quotes of Thicknesse from Tom Standage 'The Turk' 2002, who adds ''His pamphlet did not dent the Turk's popularity during the months spent in London.'' Kempelen would often leave the Automaton to play several moves while chatting in the audience.
Lo! and behold. 'Rock/Fire/Scissors/Paper/Rock/Fire/Scissors...'
represents Rook/Falcon/Bishop/Knight... So, the old selection game of
Rock, Scissors and Paper has unobserved element 'Fire' now (also Water,
Fire, Air, Earth). Moreover, math equation 'e to the (pi, i) equals minus
one' corresponds exactly and appropriately, in order, with 'e' as Rook
(base 10), pi as Bishop, i as Knight (for its different imaginary mode), and 'minus one' as Falcon (summation & resultant). In fact, wider numerical, scientific and mythological matches emerged about year 2000 eight years later:
Sun Sunday Gold Au Great Pyramid Falcon Electra(F)
Moon Monday Silver Ag Artemis' Temple Dove,Chicken Merope(P)
Mars Tu(martes) Iron Fe Colossus Rhodes Hawk Sterope(N)
Mercury Wednesday Hg Lighthouse Pharos Vulture Maia(B)
Jupiter Thursday Tin Sb Statue of Zeus Bird of Jove Taygete(K)
Venus Fri(viernes) Copper Cu Hanging Gardens Bird-Goddess Alcyone(Q)
Saturn Saturday Lead Pb Mausoleum Rook, Parrot, Calaeno(R)
[V] [X] [IX] or Raven
The last column lists the classical Pleiades, whose respective histories
and personalities correlate with the 7 pieces.
Then also exist the seven 'animals' in order: Falcon(F), Lamb(P),
Horse(N), Elephant(B), Lion or Scorpion(K), Totemic Hawk(Q), and
Serpent(R) out of Poem XV ''Piece Offering.''Tom Standage book 'The Turk' 2002: ''[In 1770] Before the audience Kempelen announced that he had built a machine the likes of which had never been seen: an automaton Chess player. ....wheels, cogs, levers, large horizontal cylinder of protruding studs similar to that found in a clockwork music box.'' And ''Edmund Cartwright had just seen the Turk in London. Surely, he reasoned, if it was possible to construct machine capable of playing Chess, it ought to be possible to build an automatic loom.'' [patented 1787] And ''There are numerous accounts of Napoleon's match with the Turk. As young man in the 1790s, Napoleon played Chess in the Cafe de la Regence in Paris. Johann Nepomuk Maelzel [who bought it by 1809] set up the Turk in the apartment of the Prince de Neufcha^tel, Napoleon's most trusted general. 'The Emperor went there, and I followed him,' recalled Constant in his 1830 memoirs.'' ''The Turk was purchased by Napoleon's stepson, Eugene de Beauharnais sometime between 1809 and 1812. Eugene was the son of Napoleon's wife Josephine by her previous husband (who had been guillotined in 1794).'' ''On June 21, 1813, the French army was defeated by the duke of Wellington at Vitoria. News of the victory inspired Maelzel to hatch a plan. He would commission new piece of music for the [automaton] Panharmonicon to mark the occasion. Maelzel jotted down rough outline of such piece and asked Beethoven to write it for him. The composer readily agreed.'' And ''Beethoven was initially skeptical about the metronome but changed his mind and started marking his scores with 'M.M.' (Maelzel Metronome) and number to indicate correct tempo setting.'' Moving exhibition to London, Maelzel augmented his display of the Turk (now Eugene's) ''with his diorama, the Conflagration of Moscow, and the Panharmonicon.'' ''Maelzel subsequently modified the speaking apparatus for trip to France so that the Turk said 'Echec' instead, and thereafter the Turk spoke French.'' --all from Standage
6 March 1819. From Tom Standage 'The Turk' 2002: Maelzel's handbill (1819-1820) declared that the Turk, giving odds of Pawn and move, would be displayed together with the automaton trumpeter and the Conflagration of Moscow. ''The view is from an elevated station on the fortress of the Kremlin, at the moment when the inhabitants are evacuating the capital of the czars, and the head of the French columns commences entry. The gradual progress of the fire, the hurrying bustle of the fugitives, the eagerness of the invaders, and the din of warlike sounds impress the spectator...'' ''as a combination of 'the arts of design, mechanism, and music, so as to produce, by novel imitation of Nature, perfect facsimile of the real scene'.'' Simultaneously, Maelzel offered for sale his patent of the Beethoven-endorsed Metronomes in order to purchase rental right from Eugene de Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson, the Turk's owner for its ongoing use. The Turk continued to beat the most skillful chessplayers in Europe, inspiring discussion about possibility for machine intelligence. Computer pioneer Charles Babbage saw the Turk play at Spring Gardens on March 6, 1819. ''The automaton played very well and had an excellent game in the opening. He gave check-mate by Philidor's Legacy,'' wrote Babbage. ''The following year on February 12, 1820, Babbage went to see the Turk again at St. James' Street and challenged it to a game.'' --Standage 'The Turk' 2002
From Standage 'The Turk' 2002: ''Played with the automaton,'' wrote Babbage, ''He gave Pawn and the move. Automaton won in about an hour.'' Visiting Pierre-Simon Laplace, Babbage saw for the first time the mathematical tables computed by hand under Gaspard de Prony. Later in 1821 Babbage, comparing with friend John Herschel, two independently-calculated astronomical tables exclaimed, ''I wish to God these calculations could be executed by steam.'' ''He decided to act,'' says Standage, sketching out how calculating machine might work. Hence, the genesis of Babbage's first mechanical computer, the Difference Engine. More complex Analytic Engine, to rely on punch cards, copying method of Joseph Jaquard (whose loom used cards for weaving patterns), was according to Standage ''inarguably the earliest ancestor of the modern digital computer: It had direct mechanical equivalents of a modern computer's processor and memory. Babbage even devised a symbolic notation with which to write programs for it.'' Questioning whether the Turk was pure machine, ''Babbage started to wonder whether genuine Chess-playing machine could, in fact, be built.''
Originally constructed in 1769 by Wolfgang von Kempelen, the Turk made first USA appearance by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel on April 13, 1826. Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of starting USA Revolution. In 1783 Ben Franklin had played the Turk at Paris. Charles Carroll, age 89, the last surviving signatory of Declaration of Independence, played the Turk May 23, 1827. ''Dr. Gamaliel Bradford outlined Racknitz's theory that a hidden dwarf or small child operated the machine, but rejected the idea of magnets under the chessboard in favor of the transparent chessboard favored by Decremps. ...the possibility that the automaton was entirely controlled by Maelzel using magnets hidden in his pockets.'' -- Tom Standage 'The Turk' 2002. '' '...A common camera obscura apparatus, of which the lens is in one of the eyes of the Automaton, the mirror being situated within the head, at such an angle as to reflect the rays of light toward a plate of ground glass placed in the back of the box, and near the occupant.' '' --Bradford in Standage. Promotional poster for 1834 show at Philadelphia: ''The automaton trumpeter, followed by the Mechanical Theater, the slack-rope dancers, the Grand Tournament, the diorama of Rheims Cathedral, musical automaton the Melodium, and the Turk as the grand finale.'' Meeting the Turk and Maelzel as young man in Boston, ''P.T. Barnum recalled that Maelzel gave him piece of advice, 'I see that you understand the value of the press, that is the great thing,' Maelzel told Barnum.'' Twenty-six-year-old Edgar Allen Poe living in Richmond, Virginia, saw the Turk play frequently from December 1835 -- inspiring Poe's essay 'Maelzel's Chess-Player' in April 1836 'Messenger'. ''He presented his conclusions in a format that prefigured his later mystery and detective stories. Poe explicitly compared the Turk to Babbage's calculating engines.'' --Tom Standage 'The Turk' 2002
E.A.Poe wrote, ''Yet the question of its modus operandi is still undetermined. It is quite certain that the operations of the Automaton are regulated by mind and by nothing else.'' And Poe wrote: ''Maelzel has a peculiar shuffle with his feet, calculated to induce the suspicion of collusion with the machine in minds which are more cunning than sagacious.'' Poe speculated ''that it would be only slightly more difficult to build a machine capable of winning all games than a machine capable of winning some games.'' --Tom Standage 'The Turk' 2002. Biographer Harvey Allen wrote, '' 'Maelzel's Chess-Player' was the first of Poe's works in which he emerged as the unerring, abstract reasoner, and foreshadowed the method he followed later in his detective stories such as 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' -- a method which has been embalmed in the triumphs of Sherlock Holmes.'' Dr. Silas Mitchell, who had attended as a child, recalled that ''the Turk, with his oriental silence and rolling eyes, would haunt your nightly visions for many an evening thereafter.'' Maelzel died at sea out of Havana, Cuba, ''as the ship approached Charleston'' [soon to be site of first battle of USA Civil War]. Professor John Kearsley Mitchell, E.A.Poe's sometimes benefactor, bought the Turk at auction. So, the Turk passed from Napoleon's stepson Eugene de Beauharnais' estate directly to Poe's family doctor. But mixed-up crates contained pieces of Maelzel's other automata and missing parts, Maelzel's final stratagem. --Standage 'The Turk' 2002
Maelzel had performed the Turk at New Orleans for months 1837 before embarking to Havana, Cuba, his final destination. Born at New Orleans the same year 1837, Paul Morphy(1837-1884) won matches with all the leading English masters. At Cafe de la Regence, Morphy defeated Daniel Harrwitz. Also at Paris Morphy defeated German Adolph Anderssen and so became accepted world Chess champion by 1859. With his French background, Morphy was, after all, returning home. According to Tom Standage's 'The Turk' (2002), Silas Mitchell witnessed the fire broken out July 5, 1854, at the National Theatre, Philadelphia, spread to the Chinese Museum, housing the Turk. Mitchell, ''standing helpless amid the fire's crackling wood and shattering glass'' would hear the Turk's last words -- ''Echec! Echec!'' The Automaton Turk (1769-1854, 85 years: 17x5). Seventeen more years later, the USA most notable conventionally-recognized fire ever, the Chicago fire October 8, 1871, destoyed many square kilometres -- surpassing even Napoleon's seige of Moscow 1812 -- the common comparison made at the time.
Appearances are deceptive. History-text orthodox versions never tell the whole, or hidden, story. Befitting our larger scheme of things, on the very same day as the Chicago fire 8.Oct.1871, the greatest recorded fire in North American history separately took place, over 600 times larger area than that urbanized Chicago Fire, raging across 1.5 million acres, 6666 square kilometres of Northern Wisconsin and upper Michigan. French trappers and Christian fundamentalists had 'opened' the region, nothwithstanding already being occupied, and there followed slash-and-burn methods on old-growth forests, in order to build Chicago, the altered environment then making fires ripe. Now in 1857 Silas Mitchell published in 'Chess Monthly' the secret of the Turk's operation. How worked this 85-year-long intrigue convincingly by mostly Cafe de la Regence Chess professionals fully cooperating with the wily Maelzel? [ Recondite footnote: Each individual year mod 17 equals one(1): 1769(Turk construction), 1837(Morphy), 1854(fire), 1871(fires)...2007; and they all chance to be actual seventeen-year Cicada (order Orthoptera) years entomologically in the field (Brood XIII), a one-month-every-seventeen-years phenomenon still observed spectacularly by inhabitants midcontinent North America. The correspondence to Chessic milestones? Merely useful mnemonics, or literary device not suggestive of latter-day agency. ]
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World's first binary computer? Chessboard 64-square uses Rook and Bishop moves. [Addition algorithm: depict each number to add across a rank by 'R' counters, then use Rook moves to slide all the representations to Rank 1; right to left, replace any and all 'doubles' by one to left, ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ continuing until each first-rank square ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ is binary 1 or 0, where a 'Rook' is ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ '1'] Bishop-like multiplication to ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ left shows chess-computer-abacus' 19x13 ___ ___ ___b___ ___ ___b___b 1 operation (differing procedure than for ___ ___ ___b___ ___ ___b___b 1 Addition). After placement, Bishop- ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ 0 counters are to move diagonally left ___ ___ ___B___ ___ ___B___B 1 downward. Moves become b d4-a1, 128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1 b d3-b1, b g4-d1, b g3-e1, a b c d e f g h b h4-e1 and b h3-f1, making first Rank now: B___B___ ___BB__BB___B___B___B and again replacing the 'doubles' with just one to each pair's adjacent left: B___B___B___B___ ___B___B___B = 11110111 = 247(base 10) --Method of John Napier in 1617 'Rabdologia', including also Subtraction, Division and Extracting Square Roots on chessboard, improves Middle Age calculating methods: 'bank' deriving from German counting board, Rechenbank. Scientific American 1985