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Check out Smess, our featured variant for February, 2025.

Constitutional Characters

This page has moved. It is now located at:

Constitutional Characters

Credits

By Charles Gilman.

Comments

Constitutional Characters. A systematic set of names for Major and Minor pieces.

Charles Gilman wrote on Thu, Feb 23, 2006 06:07 AM EST:

I am currently planning to submit a separate page for the Hybrid Diagonal,
to avoid confusion on other radial-piece pages for those not interested
in
hex-prism boards. I have reviewed the names of pieces using that
direction,
and thought up better alternatives to some of the more tenuous names for
forward-only pieces, in each case more closely relating to the
corresponding symmetric piece. Thoughts on whether these are an
improvement or the reverse are welcome.
	ASTERISK for the FO Rumbaba has problems because it refers to a pattern
specific to a hex-ranked orientation. Therefore I suggest extending the
substitution of Rum- for Dab- to give RUMCHICK.
	GOSSIP for the FO Bellman and BROADCASTER for the FO Bellwoman do not
fit
in with the usual male-female pairings. Howerver, when considering
improvements I recalled that a hôtel bag-carrier is sometimes known as a
BELLBOY - someone answering a bell rather than ringing their own, and
certainly of lower status than a Bellman. The term is alo sex-specific
with an obvious extrapolation for the other sex. I therefore suggest
BELLBOY for the FO Bellman and BELLGIRL for the FO Bellwoman to form a
neat foursome.

ARM wrote on Thu, Feb 24, 2005 09:17 PM EST:

Wow. I just read all the comments for this section, and my eyes and brain
are very tired. I would like to say that the terms orthogonal, diagonal,
and even hippogonal work just fine for me, whether it's on a square
board
or a hex board. When you try too hard to read into things, they become
less
fun, in my opinion. On a lighter note, here's some suggestions for chess
movement directions, which I'm sure are linguistically and
mathematically
incorrect enough to really annoy some people:

Vertizontal, Hedrogonal, Hexaxial, Hipporadial, Horizagonal, Paraheximal,
Gonalogonal, Trigonagonal, Hexohippozontal, Radiogonal, Orthozontal,
Dihedraxial, Hexozontal, Verteximal, Zontifical, Edge-ognal,
Point-edgimal, Side-o-zontal, Polyhedronomical, Rookogonal, Bishagonal,
Knightaxial, Geogonal, Dihippaxial, Extragonal, and of course,         
Tri-di-hippo-horizo-vertico-radio-axio-hexo-agonalogonalogonal-wise

I'm sure these are all thoroughly useless but if you like them you can
have them.

Charles Gilman wrote on Fri, Jun 18, 2004 02:41 AM EDT:

Hippogonal seems a non sequitur to me. Better to describe oblique
(non-radial) directions by their coordinates: thus the Knight, Camel, and
Zebra move along the 2:1, 3:1, and 3:2 obliques respectively. Many others
on the square board are listed in From Ungulates Outwards, which also
gives the formula for duality of moves at 45° to each other. Here are some
reasons to avoid square-board names for hex-specific pieces.
	Matching is more 'obvious' to some than to others. In the all-radial
Wellisch Hex Chess, the diagonal piece (which is short-range) is called a
Knight!
	Many of my piece names use duality, as this is linked to binding. If both
coordinates are odd, as in the Camel, binding is the same as for the Bishop
- inspiring the names Zemel, Gimel, Namel for leapers in other such
directions. Duality on a hex board is entirely different. Extrapolating
from the Glinsky/McCooey use of 'Knight' would give an unbound 'Camel'
but a 'Giraffe' bound to a third of the board.
	It is unwise to ignore the cubic board when dealing with the hex one.
Consider a hex board with cells designated ia1 to ph8. Now consider just
ia1, ja2, jb1, ka3, kb2, kc1, la4, lb3, lc2, ld1 &c.. The diagonals
between those cells are exactly like the orthogonals on a hex board. This
is like the link between just the white squares of a FIDE board and a
board of 7 rows of 2/4/6/8/6/4/2 squares. However the latter transforms
orthogonals to diagonals as well as vv, whereas the cubic-hex
transformation LOSES the original orthogonal. This means that the hex
board does not have the standard diagonal. The diagonal that it does have
transforms from the 2:1:1 oblique, which may explain why Wellisch
considered that direction oblique itself.
	Now consider a hex-prism board of 15 8-cell files in triangular formation
a bc def ghij klmno (used for a variant that I will soon be submitting).
The line k1-l2-m3-n4-o5 is plainly a square-board diagonal but, by
rotation, so is a1-c2-f3-j4-o5. The logical move for a Bishop on this
board would be all such diagonals. With such a range of moves a Bishop
could actually reach the whole board (note j4 and n4 both being reachable
from o5), as could a Camel or Zemel similarly defined by the three planes
of square boards. There is no need or reason to include a same-rank (i.e.
same-hex-board) move; after all, the square-board Bishop has none.

Anonymous wrote on Wed, Jun 16, 2004 03:11 PM EDT:

<P>I have recently been attempting to adapt as many chess pieces as possible to a succinct description applicable to any board, particularly square and hexagonal. In doing so, I have liberally used the terms orthogonal, diagonal, radial, and hippogonal, defined as follows (before reading this discussion):</p> <ul> <li>Adjacent: Sharing either a side or a vertex. <li>Orthogonal: Directions in which spaces share a side. <li>Diagonal: Directions in which spaces share two orthogonally adjacent spaces, but are not themselves orthogonally adjacent. <li>Hippogonal: A jump one step orthogonally, followed by one step diagonally onward. <li>Radial: Includes orthogonal and diagonal directions, but not hippogonal. </ul> <p>The odd part is that there are no diagonally adjacent cells on a hexagonal board under these definitions, and no cells diagonal to the center circle of <a href='http://www.chessvariants.com/43.dir/diplomat/diplomat-chess.html'>Diplomat Chess</a>, but it provides a framework for using as crazy a board as you desire, while remaining true to the way those terms have most often been used.</p> <P>I have not been including specifically three-dimensional pieces (so most of the pieces described here are out), so I have not included triagonal directions. That term to me describes the [1,1,1] direction (uniformly triaxial), without any sense of jump length. Thus, spaces in a triagonal direction should each have three orthogonally adjacent cells that are one step diagonally from the next and previous.</p> <P>I have recently run across Chatelaine in literature, exactly as Gilman describes, so I would not be uncomfortable with using it as a chess piece. However, the piece described has been used elsewhere, particularly in Shogi variants, so I might not include it in my collection.</p>

Charles Gilman wrote on Mon, Mar 15, 2004 08:14 AM EST:

Thanks to everyone for the info on Berse. Were there a 'rating other
comments' list I would select excellent on it! On reflection I have
decided against the change. It does not fit in with my rule of all
radially-enhanced Rooks (as distinct from the Marshal which is
obliquely-enhanced) being female titles. The canine/feline connotations
would particularly conflict with this, by offending both old chivalric
sensibilities and modern feminist ones! Finally I have been considering
extensions of the Crab for a future articles; the name I think most
logical for the 3:2 version of the Barc is Berz, which is just different
enough from Ferz but not from Berse.
Two further comments while I am at it. Firstly HOSTESS in square brackets
is based on a pre-publication layout and I have submitted a correction to
delete it. The correct reference to this name occurs later. Secondly in
Britain it is the other meaning of ounce that is former!

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https://ftp.chessvariants.com/piececlopedia.dir/constitutional-characters.html
First Created: Monday, December 8th, 2003
Last Modified: Friday, November 17th, 2006
File Timestamp: Wed, 14 Jul 2021 17:37:29 -0400
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