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H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Dec 2, 2021 07:26 PM UTC in reply to Thomas from 06:04 PM:

Umm, I did not even know this rule existed. WinBoard restricts the shuffle only to have the Bishops on different colors. I agree the rule makes no sense. I have also seen descriptions that did not allow the Bishops to be on adjacent squares. (That also seemed to make little sense.)

The Interactive Diagram would have to struggle to enforce this rule, because there is no way to tell it directly that a pair of pieces of different types would have to be placed on different square shades. As a work-around you could 'mark' the shades by piece type, by defining the nominal start position with a back rank RBRBNKNCQA, so that RNQ are on dark squares, and BKCA on light. You can then order a sequence of shuffles, RNQ,BKCA,QA,!BNRKC .

The first shuffle solely serves to put Q on a random dark square, the second to put A on a random light square, and the third then randomly swaps the two. The remaining pieces then have to be shuffled the usual way, i.e. the Bishops would have to go on opposit shades (indicated by the ! prefix).

I guess it would be useful to extend the shuffling capabilities of the Diagram with a prefix to indicate the piece should stay on the same color as it was in the nominal setup. Sy This would be indicated by #, then the shuffle instructions could be K#QC#AR!BN,QA, with a nominal setup where Q and A start on different shades.


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