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Snark Hunt. Variant with unequal armies on board with 41 squares, inspired by a poem of Lewis Carroll's. (6x8, Cells: 41) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Jul 6, 2003 08:35 AM UTC:Good ★★★★An improvement in the presentation would be to use £ rather than $ for the Banker, to both be more distinguishable from S for Snark and better represent Lewis Carroll's very British, English even, brand of eccentricity. As far as the game itself goes, 41 squares seems an unusual choice. 42 would better reflect the theme as the poem's introduction refers to rule 42 'No-one shall speak to the man at the helm...', and rules with this number recur in the author's other works. A character who might be an interesting addition is the Billiard Marker (M for Marker, perhaps) who could be represented as a Bishop reflecting off all the board's edges including those bordering chasms.
If certain EU bureaucrats have their way it will be € not £. If there were 42 squares they could be equated with the Banker's boxes - did Peter Aronson find them on the beach? No beavers!
Charles Gilman wrote on Fri, Mar 5, 2004 07:24 AM UTC:Good ★★★★Paul Townsend has a point, although the decision to adopt Euro currency is actually up to national governments. If Britain had joined the currency fromthe start it would probably use the £ sign as the most widely used sign historically as it represented Italian lira as well as british and Irish pounds. What should a Beaver be? An enlarged Squirrel perhaps (e.g. combining 3:0, 3:1, 3:2, and 3:3 leaps), but that would not be particularly suited to this kind of board.
Billiard Marker is not an important caracter, but it needs Butcher and Beaver. Perhaps, Snark's side also may have (but no necessary) Jubjub and Bandersnatch pieces.
The Beaver as described in my previous comment is now listed in my piece article Man and Beast 08: Diverse Directions, and as one of the forms taken by one of the mutating pieces in my year-of-the-Rat-themed variant Random Rodent Chess. The Man and Beast series has no Butcher yet, but it does have a Baker (Man and Beast 14: Oddly Oblique), Barrister and Bellman (Man and Beast 10: The Hybrid Diagonal), and Broker (Man and Beast 02: Shield Bearers). The Baker, Barrister, and Bellman are however specific to hex-prism boards and the Broker to boards other than the square-cell 2d one. In addition Man and Beast 21: Lords High Everything-Else has Bandersnatch, Jabberwock, and Jubjub versions of various pieces.
By now you may have noticed that my Barrister is different from the one here. This is perhaps a lesson is making names memorable. When I devised names for MAB 10 pieces I had certainly seen Snark Hunt Chess, but use of this name in it had slipped my mind. My own name for the Rook+Elephant compound, the Infanta, was deliberately chosen to have the mnemonic of the reputed origins of the pub name 'Elephant and Castle'.
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