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In response to Hubert: Anyone trying to be as comprehensive as I have with Man and Beast is bound to cover some quite obscure pieces, but were I inclined to include Jeppseirawan pieces at all it would have to be in the 'ad hoc combination' section of page 21 with Mushroom, Pancake, and the like. For me the name Elephant has become so associated with the Alfil and Xiang, and to a lesser extent the Silvergeneral and Bishop, that Yasser Seirawan himself was on shaky ground applying it to a piece unconnected to any of that lot. As for the pieces that I use in my own variants, I try to concentrate on the more straightforward ones. Two groups that I would concede take some effort are the Brook offshoots and the Chevron-rank ones, but for the rest I try to avoid both piece complexity and difficult names. I nearly always try to use unusual pieces in conjunction with similar ones so aid comprehension, the only major exceptions that I can think of being some of the Armies of Faith family. Names from pages 03 and 05 of Man and Beast should, except perhaps for some of the longest-SOLL ones, be memorable to anyone with a good grasp of geometry. Particular points of pride are my narrow/wide pairings for pieces sharing a leap length - [Long/Wide]player, Slimmer/Feaster, [Pro/Ex]pounder, [High/Broad]wayman, Avower/Endower, [Wi/Lo]remaster - and the Antelope theming of integer-length leapers as the Eloper, Zoetrope, and Gyroscope - with the squares of the Elf, Zebra, and Giraffe leap lengths. As I have often stressed in comments on Man and Beast, I am always happy to consider ideas for better names. When it was pointed out on another thread that Frog is part of a wider range of amphibian names I promptly adopted the ones mentioned and am currently thinking how to extend it beyond the square geometry. Writing the index has highlighted a few thoughts of my own on unsatisfactoyr names. Thus I have abandoned vast sets of unsatisfactory names in favour of a few single qualifying adjectives with which to prefix names of simpler pieces. The use of Fimbriated for certain compounds of two Bent pieces eliminated over fifty tenuous names. Similarly I eliminated my first use of the Ambrose series of names for Curved alternators by substituting Curved followed by the name of the corresponding Crooked alternator. I might be able to improve the Brook and Stockbrook family along similar lines. If you can suggest improvements for these or any pieces, I am happy to consider them.
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