Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I think there should be a remark on spelling, the word griffin (my
prefferred spelling) occurs on www.chessvariants.com as griffin, griffon,

gryphon or even gryphion (and probably other variations as well). Grffins
and hippogriffs also occur in Mark heedens Io chess, the griffin is also
in
Ganymede chess and Europan chess.

Mark Heddens hippogriff is Griffin + Rook (a Reaper in Ralph Betza's
tripunch chess) -- so different from the hippogriff described here.

A last note: The griffin is also a heraldic animal, and artist (making
chess fonts or variant chess set) may want to look at
http://home.planet.nl/~artrako/Algemeen/Grijpvogels-EN.html -- nice
griffin art.

--J'org Knappen

there is a remark on spelling.  i consulted several dictionaries on
spelling and i found virtually no indication that any particular spelling
is preferred.  i used 'griffon' because it's the one i've run into the
most in my life.  'gryphion' does not show up in the dictionary i have
here, altho it is not an unabridged dictionary, so i will have to check
in
another dictionary when i get a chance.

i can add mention of hadden's games to the page.  keeping track of what
pieces appear in what games is an extremely difficult proccess.

I propose renaming the piece described here
as hippogriff into zurafa. This term is used by Jellis
to discriminate the Tamerlane chess piece from the 
giraffe ((1,4)-leaper).

Jörg Knappen

Can anyone say what is the meaning of the word zurafa please?  I have
looked in a number of web dictionaries but cannot find it.

zurafa means giraffe in some oriental languages (without checking
I am not sure which ones apply).

--JÖorg Knappen

Zurafa is arabic meaning giraffe (and being the etymological 
source for the word 'giraffe').

--Jörg Knappen

QUOTE: 'In the diagram below, white has just moved his Griffon from b1 to a6.'

Yes, the Black King on c5 would have already been in check from a Griffon on b1. We should change the starting square of the Griffon to f5, making everything legal.

The Hippogriff of Tamerlane Chess is explained on the same Griffon page of Jeremy Good. Hippogriff moves like earlier Gryphon/Griffon/(different spellings), but is excluded from the nearby squares, that is those within the 7x7 square perimeter. Since also blockable, Hippogriff is subset of Gryphon.

1283 was year of publication of Grande Acedrez with first use of Gryphon. Timur Lenk, inventor of namesake Timur's or Tamerlane Chess (1336-1405) has Giraffe as Hippogriff, the classic Gryphon that is excluded from those near squares. So there was a hundred years to ponder better implementation of Gryphon into Hippogriff. We can presume intellectual transfer of ideas from Spain to Persia, just as there was trade continually between Inuit Arctic and Siberia. https://www.google.com/search?sa=G&hl=en&q=gustave+dor%C3%A9&tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSlQEJJONZ7scbvBUaiQELEKjU2AQaAggCDAsQsIynCBpiCmAIAxIo_1BHoEb4XzAv7EbIcuhbGD7kLkwy5OrU62D7XPr46uDr8Ldks_1y20Ohow8XOAb2THltHscfBShsKNZ48M1-z-jR2xsQ0CbEuLXPHMIVWT14Wi0srN9dfMhUs3IAQMCxCOrv4IGgoKCAgBEgQPwcxyDA,isz:l&ved=0ahUKEwi_5f-G2pzQAhXoyFQKHRL7APsQ2A4IHigE&biw=1920&bih=974#imgrc=Ackhrp7O_-BASM%3A

This piece has the power of Queen. And I’ve found a checkmating tactic for the piece which controls the spaces around the files/ranks such as Aanca, Magician and one my piece I currently omit. This tactic appears in K vs K + piece endgames and is called wind tunnel (aerodynamic tunnel). Piece confines the King in a file/rank between its covered lines, and then your King drives it to the last rank, but to avoid stalemate, you should then cut off the previous-to-last line to avoid escaping of opponent’s King. But it’s better to firstly drive them as far as you can from board center and then confine into tunnel. For Aanca it’s possible on normal board, but less possible for Magician, though you shouldn’t forget that both these pieces are from games with 12x12 board.

On 8x8 the Griffon turned out to be nearly one Pawn weaker than a Queen. Both Queen and Griffon are pieces with sliding moves in 8 directions, making their value scale similarly with board size. (This in contrast to slider-leaper compounts like Chancellor and Archbishop, which will lose value compared to the Queen when board size increases.)

The Queen has a big advantage over the Griffon on sparsely populated boards: it can make distant attacks from 8 directions rather than 4, and can also switch easily between those directions, even between the orthogonal ones. (E.g. an attack on e2 from a2 can on the next move come from e6 through a diagonal move.) This makes perpetual checking, or manoeuvring with checking moves to create attacks on other squares) much easier for the Queen. A check by a Griffon from a2 on a King at e1 can, after Ke2 only be renewed by checking again from the left. There is no way to switch to checking along a file.

Although the Checkmating Applets here cannot do bent sliders (I could not figure out a way for the user to specify those in the move-definition aid), there exists a version that can do this on my own website. (Where the piece is selected by buttons, and you cannot specify your own.) By playing with black there you can see how this 'tunnel drive' indeed often provides the fastest way to checkmate.

[Thought: perhaps we should copy those versions of the EGT builder here too, making the piece(s) selectable through the URL's query string rather than through the buttons, so that we can link the Griffon page to a checkmating applet too. I also have a 3-vs-1 Applet there that can handle hoppers and bent sliders (that cannot checkmate by themselves, such as W-then-B) as one of the pieces. It might be more difficult to utilize that in a sensible way with piece articles, as the mate would require a second piece.]

I have shaped up the article a bit (margins around the image, and a typo), changed the explanation about the irreversibility diagram such that the Griffon did not come from a square where it could capture the King (b1), and added a link to a Checkmating Applet that can handle bent riders. (Which I uploaded for the purpose.)

For now that Applet is hard-coded for doing a Griffon, as I took out all piece-selection buttons to make it look to the EGT page we already have. I am not sure whether we will need it for other pieces. The Ostrich (A-then-R) can checkmate, but I don't think we have a Piececlopedia page for that. The Applet doesn't do lame pieces, so it cannot handle the Hippogrif. It might be able to do the jumping version (which on a near-empty board would be nearly the same). It can also do the Ski-Rook (which is a sort of degenerate bent slider, D-then-R). But we also don't have a Piececlopedia page for ski pieces.

I wonder why this article goes along with using the name Hippogriff for the Tamerlane Giraffe. The Tamerlane article itself doesn't mention this name, as far as I can see a piece with this move is used nowhere else, and variants that do use the name use it for a piece that moves differently (e.g as Reaper from Betza's Tri-punch Chess in Io Chess). The article mentions that the name was suggested by John Williams-Brown (who is he anyway?), but apparently no one ever followed that suggestion.

What is worse, it is a non-sensical name for a piece with this move. Hippos means horse in Greek, which in orthodox Chess participates under the name Knight, but in most other languages is referred to by their word for horse. Nightrider moves are known as hippogonal directions. But the described move has no relation to a Knight move.

I might use the name Hippogriff for a piece where it does make sense, namely a 'Ski-Griffon', i.e. a Griffon that would jump over the F squares (and cannot move there). So that its first step is a Knight leap.

If another name than Giraffe is desirable for the Tamerlane piece, I would suggest Graphon or Giraffon. The name Hypogriff would also make some sense (Greek hypo = under, sub), as its moves are a sub-set of that of the Griffon.

I can add that there are more pieces with moves that are a sub-set of the Griffon (e.g. Spotted Griffon), which are not mentioned here.

He's the author of Meta-Chess: Adventures beyond the bounds of chess.

Twin Tower & your Chiral Griffons are also not mentioned.

He's the author of Meta-Chess: Adventures beyond the bounds of chess.

OK, great, so he wrote a self-published book. I suppose we should make the mention of his name here a link to that article you refer to, (thanks for that, BTW), so people could actually see who he is.

If the suggestion is really in that (pretty obscure?) publication, I don't think that is sufficient justification for mentioning it here like it is gospel if no one actually followed that suggestion. It is pretty easy to make suggestions no one follows, and anything published on CVP probably has wider exposure than a privately published book.

John Williams-Brown (who is he anyway?)

John William Brown is a former editor of this site, and some of the earliest editors of this site, including myself, have read his book.

What is worse, it is a non-sensical name for a piece with this move. Hippos means horse in Greek, which in orthodox Chess participates under the name Knight, but in most other languages is referred to by their word for horse.

A hippogriff is a mythical beast that like the griffon, chimera, and manticore is composed of the body parts of different animals. In one of the Harry Potter books, Harry and Hermione ride on a hippogriff. Here is a Hippogriff page on the Harry Potter Wiki, which shows images of it from a Harry Potter movie.

A hippogriff is a mythical beast that like the griffon, chimera, and manticore is composed of the body parts of different animals. In one of the Harry Potter books, Harry and Hermione ride on a hippogriff. Here is a Hippogriff page on the Harry Potter Wiki, which shows images of it from a Harry Potter movie.

Sure, I have seen all Harry Potter movies, and it is a great name for a horse-something chimera. But my points are?

• Why use it for a piece with the Tamerlane Giraffe move, which has nothing horse- (i.e. Knight-)like in its move? It has even less so than the hippo-less standard Griffon, which at least can move to the N squares.
• If no one uses the name anywhere, or only for different purposes, why promote it here?

I have now corrected the spelling of John William Brown's name, added a link to his profile, changed the link to his book to a page where you can download it, and added a picture of a hippogriff piece.

Why use it for a piece with the Tamerlane Giraffe move, which has nothing horse- (i.e. Knight-)like in its move?

If there were a hippopotamus piece, would you also expect it to move like a knight? He chose the name of hippogriff because of this piece's similarity to the griffon, as these two mythical beasts are similar.

If no one uses the name anywhere, or only for different purposes, why promote it here?

On the few pages where the name is used for a piece, I do not see it being used for this piece. I don't really like the idea of a page featuring two different pieces. Maybe we should have a giraffe2.html page for the Tamerlane Giraffe and mention the hippogriff name as Brown's suggestion for its name.

Well, I am not sure whether a piece that is used in only a single variant (even if that is a historically important one) deserves to have its own Piececlopedia page. The main purpose of such paces is to give an overview of the piece history and use, inventor, names under which it is known. So that all articles on variants that use it can refer to that, and don't have to repeat it everywhere. But if it is used in only one variant, everything there is to be said about it would already be in the variant article.

E.g. do we have a Piececlopedia piece for the Tamerlane Picket?

There are entire classes of pieces we do not have Piececlopedia pieces for. E.g. ski sliders, skip sliders, slip sliders...

OTOH, since the Griffon is the archetypal bent slider, I do think it makes some sense to discus slight variations on it. As long as none of these have their own page. I am not sure whether all lame versions of the familiar leapers would need a separate page, and would even be comfortable with the idea that it should be understood that any distant leap can also exist in a lame version.

In the case of the Griffon I don't see any reason to single out the Tamerlane Giraffe as only variation; in fact it seems one of the less important ones to me.

If there were a hippopotamus piece, would you also expect it to move like a knight? He chose the name of hippogriff because of this piece's similarity to the griffon, as these two mythical beasts are similar.

A hippopotamos is not a (mythical, hypothetical or real) hybrid or chimera of a horse and something else. So that makes it a false analogy. It is a real, well known animal that lives in water, and mentioning it would not make people think of a horse.

There are so many pieces similar to a Griffon in the sense they have a sub-set of the moves, and I think some of those would be more deservant for this name.

A hippopotamos is not a (mythical, hypothetical or real) hybrid or chimera of a horse and something else. So that makes it a false analogy. It is a real, well known animal that lives in water, and mentioning it would not make people think of a horse.

The griffon piece is not so called for being the compound of a lion and an eagle. Likewise, the hippogriff piece is not so called for being the compound of a horse (knight) and an eagle. Each piece name is meant to make sense only in terms of the general chimeric nature of each mythical beast.