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Board and Pieces (a compendium of abstract board games compiled by James J. Bonda, a bookaholic librarian from Richmond, Indiana, United States) says that Camel is a (1,3) hippogonal leaper which suggests that hippogonal isn't limited to (2,1) Nightrider-line. I like both names. What if the one that can jump is called Zurafa, but the darter one is called Hippogriff?
Unlaming Lame Ski Chess
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Mar 14 02:24 AM EDT:It seems that Bonda uses the term 'hippogonal' for what we call 'oblique'. That seems just as wrong as calling all moves that are not orthogonal diagonal. If a name for a Camelrider ray was needed I would call it a camelogonal.
So I think the conclusion that hippogonal can mean anything other than Nightrider rays is false, and the correct conclusion is that Bonda abuses the term.
For any (1,N) leaper one can make lame and/or sliding variations, by either extending their move with an orthogonal slide in the long direction, and/or requiring they slide to their destination along that same orthogonal. In the latter case you still have the possibility to choose where the slide starts, making the piece only partly lame. It seems not very useful to make up names for all of these, especially since most possibilities are never used.
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Well, Jean-Louis calls it an Eagle, in his variants and in his book. Which is probably a better translation of Aanca. Which appears to refer to the mythical 'Elephant Bird', which in not a chimera.
But all that is really sidetracking. The main points are why this variation on the F-then-R piece should be discussed in this article (or in a separate one), and not the many others. And why it would be discussed under a name that is nowhere used for this piece except here. That a former editor suggested this name doesn't seem a very good reason if no one embraced that suggestion.
So I propose to drop the name Hippogriff for this piece, and discuss it as the 'Tamerlane Giraffe' instead. I am not really against combining descriptions of related but rarely used pieces in a single Piececlopedia article, and if we decide this piece is not worth a separate article, we should add some paragraphs on Spotted Griffon, Ski-Griffon and lame Ski-Griffon too.