Comments by JohnAyer

Use caution. Mr. Jelliss's description of Modern Courier Chess is seriously at variance with all other sources I have seen. This game appears on chessvariants.com as Courier Spiel.

Of course the printable board and pieces for the Courier Game will also serve for this one.

I think that 'henchman' would be a more idiomatic translation from the German than 'commoner' or 'man' but it seems a bit late in the day to suggest that.

This reproduces EXACTLY the starting position of Carrera's variation of some four hundred years ago.

The Persian poet Firdausi, in his epic history of Iran, the Shah-nameh, or Book of Kings, gives a story of the invention of chess, and the form invented has these same pieces on the same ten-square board, but the camels are placed between the elephants and the horses, on the C and H files, and the pawns are so clearly described as standing before and behind the pieces that I wonder whether he meant each player had twenty pawns, arranged on his first and third ranks, with the pieces on his second rank.

If we call the armed female attendants Qalmaqini, and the bishop-knight a Bukhshi, then the king is called Shah instead of Padshah (emperor), and they are arranged Bukhshi, Wazir, Shah, Shahzadeh from left to right across each player's four central squares on the home-row. Murray says the version shown in the diagram above is the corrected version, but this other arrangement has its own internal logic. Probably there was some experimenting.

According to the sixteenth chapter of _The Chessmen of Mars_, the piece known elsewhere on Barsoom as the Flier is called in Manator the Odwar, but has the same powers as the Flier. To be blunt, the odwar can leap. <p>Jetan fits the Freudian theory of chess much better than chess does. Freud's theory was that a player's queen represents his mother, and this is why he guards her with such great care. In fact, of course, a chess-queen is in no way feminine, and a player protects his queen because she is his most powerful piece—but he must be prepared to sacrifice his queen if his play demands it. The princess in Jetan, on the other hand, is powerless, and a player must protect her absolutely, because to lose her is to lose absolutely.

Another line of modification would be to eliminate the commander and one queen (and their pawns) on each side, move the survivors to an 8 by 10 board, and put the emperors between the rooks and the knights. This would keep the knights at the usual distance from the center, and the pawns at the usual distance from the last rank. It also reduces the number of pieces with the bishop's move from seven (three capable of moving on either color) to five (one capable of moving on either color). Unfortunately, it puts the emperors facing one another along the diagonals, but I'm not convinced that would be a major problem on this layout. <p>Please read all previous comments (click on the button) before commenting further.

My son and I dislike the pawn promotion rules in this game, and have our own: A pawn reaching the last rank is immediately promoted to the rank of the master-piece of that file, except that a pawn promoting on the king-file is made a prince, moving as the squirrel. Thereafter, if the king is checkmated, he is removed from the board, the prince succeeds, and the game continues. This is idle speculation, though; neither of us has ever allowed the other to promote a pawn.

I suppose the name refers to the meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin in Yalta during World War II.

Hugo Legler, about 1923, called this piece an archbishop, and S. S. Blackburn, about the same time, called it a pegasus.

The piece on the g-file appears in the original as Aanca, rendered by both Murray and Gollon as Gryphon.

Castling is not mentioned in the only source. That's all I can tell you.

Further on the same theme, how about moving to the 8x12 Courier Game board, with the king, queen, bishops, and knights arranged as usual in the central files, the rooks at the corners, the emperors next to them (which will avoid the problem of shared diagonals), and, since we have seven line-riders already, put a centaur and a squirrel on the c and j files? Any thoughts? Anyone know how to set it up to test?

Here is something I found posted in a Gnostic interpretation of chess and its history. The web source is http://www.goddesschess.com/chessays/calvognosis2.html . I have, as usual, corrected punctuation, spelling, capitalization, spacing, and such superficial matters: <p>The German historian Johannes Kohtz (1843-1918) supposed that in the protochess the Rook was also a jumping figure, with a mobility limited to a third square. So the squares accessible to a Rook in h1 would be f1 and h3, and later in the game f3, d3, d1, b1, b3, b5, d5, f5, h5, h7, f7, d7 and b7. His theory makes a lot of sense (in spite of Murray's rejection after long arguments by post), because the three jumping pieces (Alfil, Knight, and Rook) represent a diagonal, hook-curved and rectilinear movement of the same range. It also expresses a perfect ranking order: The King and the Knight are the only pieces which can move to any of the 64 squares. The Firzan has half of the board, 32. The Rook half of that, 16 squares. And the Alfil, half of that, 8. <p>The striking fact, unnoticed by Kohtz in his last work of 1917, is that a jumping Rook produces also the same magic sum of 260 in the Safadi or in the Mercury board. For instance: 57-6-43-24-40-27-54-9=260. The same happens in the previous and more widely known magic square of Mercury. The four corners of each quadrant of 4x4 in the magic board sum half of the constant, 130. This reinforcement of Kohtz's theory seems to me decisive. <p>The marvellous Safadi board has, in all probability, predetermined the different movements and classes of pieces in protochess. However, once the Arabs acquired the game from the Persians, the Rook evolved into a long range piece, becoming the most powerful element of the chess army. This evolution can be explained logically as a necessity once the idea of checkmate has appeared, again according to Kohtz. In the first legend of Firdawsi, the game re-discovered by Buzurdjmir was as follows: 'The sage has invented a battlefield, in the midst (of which) the king takes up his station. To left and right of him the army is disposed, the foot-soldiers occupying the rank in front. At the king's side stands his sagacious counsellor advising him on the strategy to be carried out during the battle. In two directions the elephants are posted with their faces turned towards where the conflict is. Beyond them are stationed the war horses, on which are mounted two resourceful riders, and fighting alongside them on either hand to left and right are the turrets ready for the fray.' <p> Note from John Ayer: 'turrets' is a definite mistranslation and anachronism. <p> By the number of pieces it is easy to know that in this game the board was of 8x8 squares, though nothing is said about the rules of movement or the aim of the game. This gap is filled in the second Firdawsian chess legend about two half brothers Gau and Talhend (two typical Persian names), the latter being killed by the former during a civil war. To explain to the queen of 'Hend' who was the mother of both how her son came to die, the game of chess, which represented a battle, was invented. But it is a different game. The board is 10x10 and had perhaps a dividing line in the middle, as in today's Chinese chess, because the text says: 'This (the game) represents a trench and a battle field onto which armies had been marched. A hundred squares were marked out on the board for the manoeuvring of the troops and the kings' which is also a board of 10x10 cases, where is impossible to build a 'perfect Caissan magic square' like Safadi's. This time the movement of the pieces is described. There are three pieces jumping to a third square in diagonal, rectilinear or hook-curved direction. But there is a fourth piece which was the most powerful of all: 'None could oppose it, but it attacked everywhere in the field'. <p>This piece must be the long-ranging Rook, the most powerful figure of the set. Again according to Kohtz's theory, instead of the previous jumping Rook, the long-ranging Rook was adopted as well in the 8x8 board as a necessity once a checkmate becomes the main goal of the game. Check and check-mate have already appeared, as the beautiful text explains: <p>'If a player saw the king during the struggle he called out aloud, 'King, beware!' and the king then left his square, continuing to move until he was hemmed in. This occurred when every path was closed to the king by castle, horse, counsellor or the rest of the army. The king, gazing about in all directions, saw the army encircling him, water and trenches blocking his path and troops to left and right, before and behind. Exhausted by toil and thirst, the king is rendered helpless; that is the decree whch he receives from the revolving sky.' <p>Where did the new idea came from? Since the moment when the fate of the king decides the victory in the game, the value of this piece increases enormously because of its 'divinization' and inviolability. In a way, chess has become a monotheistic game. The cultural atmosphere in ancient Persia fits well with the implicit idea. In contrast to Greece, were a king was only 'primus inter pares', basically equal in his human nature to his subordinates, a Persian 'Shahanshah' was worshiped almost as a God. 'The ruler possessed a special quality in the eyes of his subjects, which was called 'farn' or 'farr' in New Persian, 'farrah' in Middle Persian, 'xvarana' in Avestan. Originally meaning 'life force', 'activity' or 'splendour', it came to mean 'victory', 'fortune' and specially the royal fortune' (R. Frye.op.cit. p.8) <p>There is a well known story in the biographies of Alexander the Great. At his beginning, he was a 'normal' Greek leader, but after conquering the Persian throne he warmed to the way Persian courtiers treated him as a God. He intended to receive the same 'proskinesis' from his countrymen, but Callisthenes refused to genuflect and was murdered in revenge by Alexander's hand. The 'agon' in chess and its voluntaristic message points basically to a Hellenistic background. But 'Shah-mat' in chess, an expression which has kept its Persian root in all languages during the chess evolution, may have its origin in the influences irradiating from Persian cultural ground. <p> End of quotation. The description of the king perishing of exhaustion and thirst seems to me to be strongly influenced by the miserable fate of the Imam Husayn at Karbila. Note that, while 'Shah mat' does indeed mean 'The king is dead,' the king cannot actually be killed, and the Persian phrase is a corruption of 'Shah-i-mandaz,' 'The king is helpless.' <p>Now, assuming this conjecture, we have a pre-chess on an eight-square board with king and ferz in the central files, flanked by alfil, knight, and dabbabah, with single-step pawns on the second rank. The conjecture assumes that check and checkmate had not appeared, so perhaps the battle was to the annihilation of one side. Does anyone consider this a reasonable conjecture? I will welcome any actual discussion, whether favorable or otherwise to the hypothesis. <p>According to Murray's _History of Chess_, one early attempt to improve chaturanga, while still in India, was to change the alfil to a dabbabah.

I propose that this game can be derived from the pre-chess or proto-chess described in a note to chaturanga by adding our rook to the outside of that array and then squaring off the board and adding two more pawns. From this game chaturanga can be derived by moving it back to the eight-square board and dropping the orthogonal-leaping camel (our dabbabah) or alternatively the alfil from the array and giving its place to the rook. From this game, Shatranj al-Kamil Type One, I think we can also derive the early form of Chinese chess, which was played on a board of eleven lines by eleven, that is, ten squares by ten. The rooks, or chariots, are retained unaltered. The elephants retain their move unaltered, except that it is now limited by the river, but I doubt the river existed on the earlier board. The horses retain their native move in slightly modified form. The orthogonal-leapers, camels in this game but dabbabahs to us, become pieces that leap orthogonally to capture, moving like rooks the rest of the time. The king and minister probably had the same moves as in the original game; the nine-castle was not found on that earlier board.

I have a conjecture about the origin of Chinese Chess. It is known that there was an earlier version, played on a board ten squares by ten, uncheckered; Murray reproduces a reconstructed arrangement by Karl Himly, with the 'king' and 'queen' arranged fore-and-aft in the nine-castle. This is a crucial (in many ways!) error. The current Chinese Chess board, eight squares by nine with a nine-castle at each end and a river across the middle, is known to be older than Chinese Chess, and to have been used for two previous games. There is therefore no basis for drawing the nine-castle on the ten-by-ten-square board for the earlier version. There is also no basis for believing that the earlier board contained a central river. Take them away, and we have the plain ten-by-ten-square board of so many variants, including Shatranj al-Kamil I. It also has the same pieces as Shatranj al-Kamil I: A king, his attendant minister, two elephants moving as alfils, two knights or horses, two rooks, and two orthogonal leapers, with a front rank of pawns. I think therefore that when Chaturanga was introduced into China in the time of the Wei-ti Emperor, and he had the two players beheaded and forbade the use of any game with a piece representing an emperor or called such, Chaturanga was indeed driven out of China. A couple of centuries later Shatranj al-Kamil Type One was introduced along another trade route from Persia. Perhaps the players were informed of the previous edict, or perhaps it was just their native prudence that persuaded them to demote one king to governor and the other to general, each with his appropriate officer. They then moved the game to a native board, abandoning the race game for which that board must have been quite inconvenient. Since the commander-in-chief and his adjutant were now inside a fortress, they were forced to stay within its walls. The elephant, huge, heavy, and one imagines heavily laden, was ruled unable to cross the river. The orthogonal leaper was changed from a camel to a catapult, or cannon, capable of destroying its victim even past a screen, but moving along the ground. The rook, or chariot, was left unchanged, and the pawn and horse were slightly modified for reasons that I don't see. <p>The odd thing is that Murray almost worked this out himself; he remarked on the great similarity between the earlier Chinese game of chess and the Persian variants. I think it was only the spurious nine-castle on Himly's diagram that prevented him from seeing the obvious.

I have scrutinized the late-medieval painting on this page (the enlarged image, that is)and it clearly shows the king and griffin on the central files, and crocodiles on e and h.

Yes, I was speaking of the dabbaba(h). As for whether Chinese Chess ever had a leaper, I doubt anyone knows. Murray quotes a later Chinese work on chess, I suspect from the Ming dynasty, remarking on how little they knew of how chess was played in the Tang and Sung periods, except that it was obviously different.

Kohtz's idea is that the same thing did happen a millenium earlier: that the original piece on the corners was what we now call a Dabbabah, and that it was joined and then replaced by the Rook.

I have read and enjoyed the book _The Chess Artist_ by J. C. Hallman. He describes his friendship with a Mongolian woman who is a Grand Master. In one of their conversations she seems to deny that 'Bers' or 'Berse' means anything in Mongolian--except 'chess queen' of course. It is the word 'Fers' adjusted for the fact that Mongolian has no f. It somewhat resembles the words 'Merzé' (mastiff) and 'Bars' (snow-leopard, formerly 'ounce'), both of which have been taken as guides in carving the pieces.

Very well! The site http://www.goddesschess.com/chessays/calvognosis2.html has this to say about a conjectural parent of Chaturanga: <p>The German historian Johannes Kohtz (1843-1918) supposed that in the protochess the Rook was also a jumping figure, with a mobility limited to a third square. So the squares accessible to a Rook in h1 would be f1 and h3, and later in the game f3, d3, d1, b1, b3, b5, d5, f5, h5, h7, f7, d7 and b7. His theory makes a lot of sense (in spite of Murray's rejection after long arguments by post), because the three jumping pieces (Alfil, Knight, and Rook) represent a diagonal, hook-curved and rectilinear movement of the same range. It also expresses a perfect ranking order: The King and the Knight are the only pieces which can move to any of the 64 squares. The Firzan has half of the board, 32. The Rook half of that, 16 squares. And the Alfil, half of that, 8. <p> End of quotation. The goddesschess page cited above suggests that this protochess traveled to Persia, where the concepts of checkmate and check were introduced. The rook was invented to make checkmate more attainable, and the board was enlarged to ten squares by ten to accommodate it. This game is known to John Gollon and his followers as Shatranj al-Kamil Type I. The orthogonal leaper (0,2) in that game is called a Jamal, or camel. It has the same move as the dabbabah in Tamerlane's Shatranj al-Kabir. We are apparently to infer that the rook was so popular that players used it at the corners of the eight-square board instead of the old 0,2 leaper, and the game in this form traveled back to India and supplanted its predecessor as swiftly and thoroughly as modern chess did medieval chess in the late fifteenth century. My thought is simply that Shatranj al-Kamil I traveled along the Silk Road through Central Asia to China, where the camel/dabbabah became the cannon/catapult, extending its leap from two squares to any number. The game was transferred to a previously existing Chinese game-board, and with a few minor adjustments became Xiangqi.

As for Charles Gilman's question as to the literal meaning of Berse: I have read and enjoyed the book _The Chess Artist_ by J. C. Hallman. He describes his friendship with a Mongolian woman who is a Grand Master. In one of their conversations she seems to deny that 'Bers' or 'Berse' means anything in Mongolian--except 'chess queen' of course. It is the word 'Fers' adjusted for the fact that Mongolian has no f. It somewhat resembles the words 'Merzé' (mastiff) and 'Bars' (snow-leopard), both of which have been taken as guides in carving the pieces.

Mr. Truelove knows something about Chezz, and lists pieces that were not described in the only document where I ever saw Chezz mentioned. Where is this information available, or when will we see it?

I think that Tamerlane's Chess was derived from this game. Shatranj al-Kamil Type I has an orthogonal rider, an orthogonal leaper, a diagonal one-step mover, and a diagonal leaper. Someone filled out these two sets with a diagonal-rider (the Taliah, which was for some reason forbidden a single-step move) and an orthogonal one-step mover (the Wazir). Then someone made the horse the basis for another family by adding a one-step-farther leaper (the Jamal) and a diagonal-plus-orthogonal rider (the Zarafah; again, short moves are forbidden). The individualization of the pawns was a complete novelty.

I think this game was derived from Shatranj al-Kamil Type I, which has orthogonal-riders (the Rukhs), orthogonal-leapers (the Jamal), diagonal one-step movers (the Firzan), and diagonal-leapers (the Alfil). The game-designer filled out these two families by adding an orthogonal one-step mover (the Wazir, or vizir) and a diagonal-rider (the Taliah, or picket, which for some obscure reason is forbidden to take a one-square move). The horse was then made the basis for a third family by adding a one-square-farther leaper (the Jamal, or camel, the original camel being rechristened a Dabbabah, or war-machine) and a diagonal-plus-orthogonal-rider (the Zarafah, or giraffe; again, short moves are forbidden). The individualization of the pawns is a complete novelty. <p>

For future reference, this site includes a Piececlopedia at http://www.chessvariants.com/index/mainquery.php?type=Piececlopedia&orderby=LinkText&displayauthor=1&displayinventor=1&usethisheading=Piececlopedia which describes all the principal pieces. If a piece is mentioned without comment, that's a good place to look first.

On reviewing Murray and Gollon, I find that the pawn promotion rule for this game is unknown. The rule given is from another game, and its application to this one is a conjecture by Murray. Promotion determined by file is therefore as valid as any other rule agreed on by two players.

Not the faintest, Keith. Where, exactly, are the stars located, please?

This is discouraging! Another anonymous post on the same side, and another dodge! The name produced for a couple of posts was not 'Harold Pooter'! I Google-searched on 'Harrold Pooter' and found nothing, so there is no verification.

I object to the name, as it is usually reserved for shatranj as played in Europe, with no fixity as to whether the kings opposed each other on the d or the e file.

Yes, I think most people who are good at chess would know about this game. This is one of the first variants known to the west, being described in Falkener's _Games Ancient and Oriental and How to Play Them_, published in the nineteenth century, and again in Murray's _History of Chess_. It has been described since in many books about chess and its relatives, or more generally about board games.

Much thanks, again, to all you gracious gentlemen who do such excellent work on this delightful subject.

Thank you for changing the name. It looks like an interesting game.

I agree that this page is excellent, and that it should be easier to find. I found and bought two plastic chess sets and a checkers set made by the same company, in the same colors (beige and a very dark red), to use the same size board, and with a utility knife and a glue gun and a couple of hours made (on each side) a sage, a fool, and two elephants (for Courier Spiel, as I interpret the pieces) and a couple of emperors and a prince (for Emperor Chess, which I have extensively modified [see the page] and now want to play). Pending my learning to post photographs to the Internet, here is what I did: I cut the heads off two bishops, just under the collar. I glued each onto a stack of three checkers, making an emperor (bishop + lame dabbabah-rider). The bottom piece I smoothed off and glued onto a stack of two checkers, making an elephant (ferz + alfil). I simply glued a pawn onto a checker to make a fool (man). I took one king and sliced the cross off the top and the base off the bottom to make a prince (squirrel). I took a knight and glued it to the severed base of the king and glued that to a checker, making a sage (centaur). I was pleased to see that the prince and sage are the same height, as I have given them complementary positions in Emperor Chess, which I have changed so much that maybe I should rename the result. I had intended to saw two files off each of two boards and slap them together to make a 12x8 board, but they turned out to be surprisingly substantial, and I haven't done it yet. I will try to get pictures to post, but meanwhile am looking forward to playing with these pieces.

It appears to me that the l-pawn is guarded by the crowned rook on the m-file.

Congratulations to the entire family, and please give your wife our compliments on the excellent workmanship!

Just out of curiosity, why do we have two consecutive links (from What's New?) to this one page?

According to Murray on page 57, al-'Adli, in the ninth Christian century, reported that in India a stalemated player won, which he contrasted with the rule with which he and his readers were familiar. According to that same account, the elephants stood in the corner squares, and had the move of the dabbabah rather than the alfil; the rooks stood on the c and f files. A player who bared his opponent's king won, even if the opponent could return the compliment on the next move--a rule that was also current in the Hejaz, although the rest of the Moslem world held that if the opponent could even the score on the next move, the game was tied. <p> As for the crosswise arrangement of the kings, the arrangement shown in Hans Bodlaender's diagram is that given by Murray on page 80 as used in recent times in India in the varieties of chess that were apparently of native descent (distinguished from shatranj, introduced by the Persian conquerors, and European chess, introduced by the British, French, and Portuguese conquerors). In ancient times there may not have been a fixed rule. As for pawn promotion, the rule given in a work 'written about 1600 or 1700,' as Murray says, seems to me to say that a pawn reaching the ultimate rank on the a, d, e, or h file is promoted to counsellor, and a pawn reaching the ultimate rank on the b, c, f, or g file is returned to its square of origin with the rank of counsellor (ferz). This is on page 64, and the text is as vague as the date. As for stalemate, 'When a king is imprisoned without standing in check, and no other of his pieces can move, he may slay the piece of the enemy in his vicinity which imprisons him.' So the stalemated player does not win. Just before this we read: 'It is not proper to protect another piece rather than the King. The slaying of the King is yet considered proper. Imprisonment is counted as a defeat of the King. If the King is left entirely alone it is reckoned a half-victory, if he is checked 64 times in succession he is also held to be defeated.' I think we might fairly understand that as perpetual check. The game begins with each player moving his counsellor and counsellor's pawn two squares forward, 'Also another piece which goes one square distant is advanced at the same time...' apparently another pawn. <p> On page 81 Murray describes Hindustani chess, one of the three native varieties current in the nineteenth century, when all the pieces had the moves current in Europe. In this game a pawn reaching the last rank is promoted to the master piece of that rank, except that on either central file promotion is to vizier (Q). Further, a pawn can only be promoted if the appropriate piece has already been lost; a player can never have more of any sort of piece than he started with. Murray specifies that the color restrictions of the elephant, now moving as a bishop, must be observed. This means that a pawn cannot be promoted to elephant on the c file until that player has lost his elephant that started on the f file. A pawn that cannot be promoted cannot be advanced to the eighth rank; it must remain where it is, an immobile target. Whether it can offer a threat that cannot be executed is a subtlety that seems not to be addressed. Logic suggests to me that it cannot. On page 82 Murray describes various conclusions to the game. Checkmate is a win. Stalemate is not allowed; a move that inflicts stalemate must be retracted, and another move played. Capture of all of a player's pieces (pawns are ignored) is a half-win. When both players are reduced to a king and a single companion, the game is drawn. Perpetual check is a draw. It is in this game, not the earlier ones described above, that the king has the privilege of making one knight-leap, provided he has not been checked. According to one questionable source, the king cannot capture on that leap. Conclusion: John Gollon, sitting in the Cleveland Public Library, reading its copy of Murray's _History of Chess_ and taking handwritten notes, confused three sets of rules. Fergus, I hope you're not too disappointed. This page, with its seventy comments, should probably be scrapped.

Do we have a page on Tsui Shogi? I can't find it.

The first edition contained several errors that I hope were corrected in the second. In Chapter 2, Chaturaji, the starting positions of the green and yellow forces have been transposed. Chapter 11, Grande Acedrex, does not note that a pawn reaching the last rank in the f file is promoted to aanca (gryphon). Chapter 15, Turkish Great Chess Variation 2 (Atranj or Qatranj), omits from the starting array four knights at e3, f3, e8, and f8. In Chapter 21, Korean Chess, he failed to note that a hpo (cannon) may not capture another cannon. In Chapter 22, Japanese Chess (Shogi), the table of starting positions contains three errors: the kaku (bishops) start on b2 and h8, the hisha (rooks) start on h2 and b8, and the next-to-last pawn starts on h7, not h4. Chapter 23, Tsui Shogi, states that captured pieces are returned to play, as in Shogi. In fact they stay dead. The rules are correctly stated on this website (well, tsui shogi, or chu shogi, is off-site). In addition we have found that Chapter 1, Chaturanga, is inauthentic.

I have been asked for the pawn-promotion rule. My only source, al-Adli as quoted by Murray, does not mention promotion. He describes the rules he found in India by comparing them with the rules he knew in Arabia, and as he makes no mention of pawn promotion, I can only guess that it was the same as in shatranj: a pawn reaching the last rank is promoted to firzan.

I would love to see a file of NOST-algia made available somewhere. I hope there is such a thing.

It seems we must go beyond the resources of this website. You might approach www.abstractstrategy.com, the Abstract Strategy Games website; they have recovered the rules for some other obscure games. I am doing some searching of boardgames sites, but have not found it so far.

I have read the translation linked in Eduard Navratil's comment, and it appears that there is no difference between the unicorn's (rhino's) first move and its later ones. It makes a knight's leap, and may rest at that point or continue diagonally away from its square of origin. Otherwise put, it leaps over the first square orthogonally, and from that square moves one or more squares diagonally.

As for the lion, the manuscript usually follows the medieval convention of counting a piece's square of origin in describing its move, so I think we have a leap to the second square orthogonally: what we usually call a dabbabah.

And the king and the aanca are on the wrong files. I wish some qualified editor (which I regrettably am not) would correct these various errors.

Looks good, though I haven't gone over it thoroughly. The people of that western land would not know what an elephant was, so that name wouldn't be used.

With all due respect to John Gollon, I don't see why pawns should be allowed to take a first move that would cross the centerline, and I also don't see any reason for castling when the king can easily drop back into the bottom rank and let his guard protect him.

And very interesting it is! Still, a few thoughts bubble up. A different piece is listed in the Piececlopedia under the name 'Duke,' and the inventor is Eric Greenwood. The piece that combines Man and horse is usually known as a centaur, and I wish we could be a little more consistent. Then, I know, you would have had to find a different initial for the crowned rook, or rook-ferz, also known as a Dragon King.

The knights are at a disadvantage so far from the center, but the duke and squirrel are admirably placed and armed to do the knights' usual duty.

With the guard in front of the king, I personally wouldn't bother with a king's pawn.

Not only is the king probably safer where he is, I don't think castling makes much sense on a board so broad.

Your exposition of your logic is indeed instructive. The notes at Emperor Chess show most of the steps by which I evolved that game into something that I think should be much better; when I have gotten someone to play-test it with me (next month, I hope) I intend to offer that one, too.

The appendix to _The Chessmen of Mars_ says, 'The game is played with twenty black pieces by one player and twenty orange by his opponent, and is presumed to have originally represented a battle between the Black race of the south and the Yellow race of the north. On Mars the board is usually arranged so that the Black pieces are played from the south and the Orange from the north.'

My favorite is Courier Spiel. The reason is very simple: the game is great fun to play. It does have a number of interesting symmetries.

It stays where the pawn reached the promotion-rank. That is, it stays until your next turn, at least.

Harry, you seem to be asking whether the capture is obligatory. It is not.

This looks like fun... BUT: Rule 4 says, 'The goal for the Jedi is to eliminate checkmate the Sith Master.' Should I delete 'eliminate' and go with the result?

Are you asking for an acknowledgment that the symmetry is rotational rather than mirrored? or that there are four singleton pieces in the center rather than two?

That's the way it was: symmetrical with respect to a point rather than a line.

I think that the piece labeled a bishop is actually a bishop, because it wears a miter, as a bishop does, and carries a pastoral staff, as a bishop does.

Sure you can, Michael; there are games on record with five queens on the board at once.

There is no rule that a king must be checked before it is checkmated. In fact, 'no check without mate' is one special condition that is sometimes used to handicap a stronger player in friendly games.

Eric, where can I find out more about Courier Chess, Mods 4 & 5?

A year or so ago a British chess club wanted to sell a copy of this book to raise money, and Fred Wilson of Fred Wilson--Books in New York City said that he had sold several copies over the years, and he didn't believe that only fourteen copies were printed.

This is an excellent gift to us all! Thank you!

Eric, please send me an e-mail?

Splendid thought about the two-square pawn move. I wish it were mine!

Mr. Steinbrink has supplied a useful link, but the rook is styled as a cannon. A canon is (to simplify a bit) a priest serving in a cathedral.

'Rules are the same as those used in standard chess' becomes indeterminate when applied to castling. I can imagine castling and recastling, as laid out by Mr. Gast in his two enlargements.

When viewing a Game Courier preset, the 'List all Comments' button doesn't work.

The adjutant seem quite similar to Mr. H. R. Lambert's Emperor in Emperor Chess. I degraded the piece to Grand Duke, and then imagined an Archduke, which, I think, would be the same as this adjutant: a bishop plus a dabbabah-runner?

Thank you, Yu Ren Dong!

I am also an annoying pedant (though I didn't write that remark). I should not have said that the Atlanteans would not know what an elephant is; they probably would have known. I am playing Great Shatranj D at the moment, and enjoying it. I consider it Good, subject to possible upgrade later.

It occurred to me that in shrinking Shatranj al-Kamil v.1 back onto an 8x8 board it would have been cleverer to combine the dabbabahs and alfils into alibabas, and possibly upgrade the ferz to move one square in any direction.

Why is it that this game, Bird's Chess, has a page by that title, with 'bird' in the URL, but the comments file calls it 'The Emperor's Game'? In all other games that I have checked, the game and its comments go by the same name.

Years ago I read that Bird called his R+N the Prince, and put it beside the king, and his B+N the Princess, and put it beside the queen. He may have experimented somewhat.

The man seems to me to be dismayed, and the woman confident. The game has been analyzed. The woman is checking, and can force checkmate in about three moves.