Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

If you already use the name Kirin for one of the pieces, it would be better to use Phoenix for the WA.

'Warmachinewazir' might be a good mnemonic name for an image, but it is a horrible name for a piece in a game. I think 'Woody Rook' would be better, despite its high Waffle content. Or something like (Seige-)Tower.

Hi H.G.

I didn't know Kirin is related to Waffle/Phoenix as a name somewhere, if that's what you are saying. I'd felt they were independent, based on common past usage on CVP. I'm kind of bummed out by your suggestion, because I've used Kirin and Waffle in many games, including in the names of games themselves, some published already, some still unpublished. 'Phoenix' instead of 'Waffle' gave me a name-collision issue one time for a CV idea of mine, and I also thought sometimes Waffle made a better sounding part of a game name in the case of some of my unpublished games, too.

It is a similar story for my usages of 'Warmachinewazir', in the case of several/many as yet unpublished games (including in the name of the games themselves, where this one long 'word' seemed preferable to use to 'Woody Rook' to me, and Tower by itself seemed ambiguous, e.g. could mean rook).

Note to editor(s): I have not changed the Metadata for my games that I think are ready, as I feared it might cause lots of vital game information to be inadvertently deleted, as has happened to people in the past. Perhaps editor(s) can change the Metadata for me, as they may have done for other people's as yet unpublished games in the quite recent past.

Hi Kevin and HG. Alas I can't see what is your discussion about cause of a distinction between Private and Member Only. I didn't notice this distinction before, but it is a change which is frustrating as being not an editor I can't see.

Btw and @Fergus, this is not friendly. Either the full discussion is private and I see nothing at all, either is not and as a Member I should see everything.

I have two questions. How is Kirin related to WA? I had always seen Kirin=FD. And Phoenix=WA. Are they cases where Kirin is WA?

About Warmachinewazir. I modestly think I was the first to call WD a War Machine, abridged in Machine, in my oldest variants, first versions of Gigachess, Terachess, etc. Others were calling it Woody Rock following Betza. So what is Warmachinewazir? If it is WD, why not calling it simply War Machine or Machine?

Hi Kevin and HG. Alas I can't see what is your discussion about cause of a distinction between Private and Member Only. I didn't notice this distinction before, but it is a change which is frustrating as being not an editor I can't see.

Kevin simply neglected to change the status from Private to Members-Only when he asked for review. (It's on the metadata page, available from the link right below the "edit this page" link.)

Hi Jean-Louis

Now that I vaguely recall, 'Phoenix' may be the name used for a certain type of piece in shogi variants (Kirin certainly is). I think that may be what H.G. is getting at, when he says I should use the name Phoenix (instead of Waffle) if I have a Kirin in a given CV - i.e. to 'please' those knowledgeable about shogi variants.

However, my unpublished CVs that do use both piece types (with one having the name Kirin) also do not even pretend to be shogi variants, and thus I doubt shogi-philes would much object to my using 'Waffle' (though some may sneer if they are snobbish). In the Pieces Section of my Rules Pages for CV ideas that use the two piece types together, I suppose I could simply note that 'Phoenix' is another name for 'Waffle', to please any unreasonably stubborn fusspots - but should I really do all that extra work, unless an editor insists, or asks nicely? :)

Using the name 'Warmachinewazir' is no more controversial in my eyes - I find nothing too terrible about it at all (I suppose that's purely a matter of taste or opinion). 'Woody Rook' sounds less clear and less serious, if anything, to me at least, but I guess Betza gave it a longer and somewhat better known tradition (but so he did to the sillier unrelated fibnif piece type name).

I understand that a Dabbabah has been called a Warmachine by some some people in the past - so appending wazir to the end of it (as in certain GC Piece Sets) seems natural and more importantly adds some clarity. Dabbabahwazir would be even more clear, but Dabbabah is a somewhat difficult name for many Westerners to pronounce, I'd guess. Plus, Warmachine sounds more exciting/cool.

Similarly as above, I could say in a Pieces Section for a given CV idea of mine that 'Woody Rook' is another name for it, but why bother unless compelled to? Maybe I'm in a gnarly mood lately (it's income tax filing season), but that sort of pile of fusspot-pleasing work, if and when it happens, is a real turnoff from contributing here...

As I explained earlier, I simply didn't want to risk having submission(s) wiped out (deleted) inadvertently, as has sometimes happened in the past with other members. If editor(s) insist, I will have to try to do something with the Metadata, if they won't do it for me (as they may have for other people).

Hi Kevin

I think they were nothing more than just a discussion, no pedant scholar stuff here. The fact that we are writing is sometimes wrongly interpreted, we would not have the same feeling in a real f2f discussion.

Indeed the Kirin and Phoenix are widely used in shogi variants and they form a couple for many people. I also like to follow that. As the matter of fact, both are monsters based on the Chinese mythology, the Phoenix is not even a phoenix as we figure out in the West but a "fenghuang" with a sort of rooster head. I made both in Staunton-like 3D printing, it was fun. See here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6403954

Yes the Dabbaba (no need for the h) means a siege machine. It even means a war tank in modern Arabic! Difficult to pronunce? Da ba ba. Maybe for English, otherwise nothing can be simpler. Long long time ago, about 30 years ago, I investigated the use of Alfil and Dabbaba with the addition of a 1-step move to their 2-step leap. And to distinguish from the Arabic names, I used the English name. This how we got the Elephant and the War Machine, sometimes said Modern Elephant and Modern Machine. I'm guilty.

In short, I think there is no need to mention "Woody Rook" which is confusing with Rook and no much in use nowadays. If you have Kirin, it would have some logic to pair it with Phoenix, but if you prefer Waffle, this is your right, no doubt about that.

I always like your games, I'm eager to see what it is.

Hi Kevin and HG. Alas I can't see what is your discussion about cause of a distinction between Private and Member Only. I didn't notice this distinction before, but it is a change which is frustrating as being not an editor I can't see.

This distinction was made at your request, and you provided feedback when I working on it. And now you're saying you haven't noticed it?

this is not friendly. Either the full discussion is private and I see nothing at all, either is not and as a Member I should see everything.

I should not have been able to read this comment from this account, and you should not have been able to read any comments on this page. Likewise, I should not be able to post here from this account, yet if you're reading this, I did. I will have to close these holes in the security of private pages.

@Fergus: please.

Yes I remember now my request. But this is different. What I wanted is that when I post a game which is under construction, nobody except the editors can see it. I NEVER said that I wanted the comments made on this page to be seen from anybody. So, this is why I didn't recognize my request in this change.

Now, I understand also that it was what you call a hole in the security. If I understand you well, as the matter of fact what should have been in place is finally what I was asking. In other world, without this "hole", I wouldn't have never seen these comments and I would have never made that comment which vexed you.

So, at the end, everything will be correct and everyone will be happy.

================== @H.G.Muller,

Respected H.G.Muller, Your Playtet Applet new version is

not working well, or if I could modestly say, it destroys a lot of

stuff, which took me so much time to compose and attention on

it.

       Could you do me a favor, by reverting to the previous    

PlayTest applet version, which is fast, efficient, and functioning

stable?

 Thanks so much.   Thanks for your contribution to  the  

playtest applet work. Could you write the link or applet page to me , that will be

greatly helpful.

Thank you. sincerely, Adella

@Kevin: It's good that you put in a note about the pieces' more familiar names, though I think that information should be in parentheses, or in the Notes section.

That said, I do get a kick out of the Ferfil name, even though the piece is more familiar as the Modern Elephant.

@ Bob:

With respect, that's the kind of make-work hair-splitting I was alluding to earlier. In any case, if you want some sort of a precedent (not that that always impresses a given editor), the Pieces Section on Jean-Louis' Rules Page for his Very Heavy Chess CV shows a similar way of doing it to mine, perhaps (and the Page was published, again not always impressing a given editor in future):

https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/very-heavy-chess

Respect noted. I was mainly looking at it from a reader's/proofreader's standpoint. It was just a suggestion, really.

(And I still may steal that Ferfil name at some point.)

Ferfil is the name George Jelliss(sp?) gave to the FA, I read somewhere on CVP site long ago. Modern Elephant is a name for it I first saw on the Fairy Chess Pieces wiki (maybe a citation was requested by wiki staff, back then(?!)) - perhaps Dr. H.G. Muller wrote at least some of the wiki, and maybe even gave that piece that name(??) - not sure. In historic Courier-Spiel it was simply called a 'bishop' (chess' modern bishop is called a 'courier'), which simply wouldn't do at all nowadays.

If WA is Waffle then FA is Falafel. If FA is Ferfil then WD is Wazaba. If FD is Kirin then WA is Phoenix.

Yes, you are in a bad mood; people are only offering advice for how to improve your article. In English one doesn't form longer words by stringing together other words, as one does in German or Dutch, so warmachinewazir is awkward for that reason alone. If you have aversion to the word Dabbaba, it is inconsistent that you use that very same word in the next sentence. I might have done some editing on the fairy-piece wiki, but I am sure Modern Elephant is not my invention. (The history tab on the Wikipedia article shows that it was in fact added in June 2014, with Shako as reference, together with a host of other pieces, by an anonymous user logging in from an IP address that maps to Spain.) In my mind Elephant is synonymous to Alfil, and Alfaerie pieces strengthen that impression by using an Elephant as symbol for it. Just as much as Tower could be understood to mean Rook, because the Rook is depicted as a castle tower. (Which is why I proposed Seige Tower; I still think this would be an excellent name for the WD, because it is very Rook-like, and seige tower would be a valid translation of the Persian word Dabbaba).

I would have translated Dabbaba as mantelet

What doesn't work? It would be more productive to fix that than to revert to the previous version. The new version should not really be different from the previous one, as long as you don't click the 'morphing and confining' link under the piece table.

I had to look up "mantelet," and interestingly it's quite similar (biut not quite identical) to what I understand an actual rook to have been. That's given me some ideas....

@François: mantelet seems French, and not many French would know what it is. I had to look on WP :=). English is Mantlet. In any case, dabbaba seems a more generic term for a siege engine.

I can see your reasoning, Haru. A possible issue for me is that some of these unorthodox pieces have more names that were given to them over the years than some of the other types in the group. I wanted to use certain names, but Kirin has only one name as far as I know, and thus waffle gets thrown out with the bathwater, if phoenix must therefore be used (which H.G. for one may not mind, but I have a variant idea named Waffle-Spiel and Phoenix-Spiel somehow didn't appeal to me as much as a name, for example). It may also at times be certain name(s) don't appeal to someone, for whatever reason, and why should they be 'forced' to use them, if they are 'paired' by name with a piece that has a given name that that person doesn't mind the sound of, again for whatever reason?

edit: standard chess itself may have similar issues. 'Castle' is a popular nickname for rook (at least among novices), and similarly 'horse' for knight, 'cleric' or 'prelate' for bishop, 'lady' for queen (perhaps) and 'royal pieces' is a nickname sometimes used for king and queen as a pair. You also can have an issue building an opening repertoire, say with Black - you may want to play the Nimzo-Indian (just one choice) vs. 1.d4, but if White plays 3.Nf3 or 3.g3 then you have more than one choice against each of those, and you may dislike that there aren't more options vs 3.Nc3 than the Nimzo-Indian that you like to play. Also, you may like to play 3.g3 Bb4+, but not 3.Nf3 Bb4+, even though 'logic' may suggest one should be played if the other is.

In fact, I found this word (dabbaba) strange and wondered whether it was a mobile wooden tower for shooting from above or climbing the walls, or a large mobile shield(mantlet) against throwing weapons to reach and then dig into the walls. I had the impression that it was more likely to be the latter (ex of reference), but it's not certain, and needs to be confirmed by specialists.

I would say that rook come from roque (in french) itself comming from the Arabic rukh meaning chariot.

The representations from this XI th century (Ex1 Ex2) in France look like a stylized carriage but I think the meaning had alrady been lost, as it sounded like the word roc (meaning rock), it has evolved towards tour (tower in french). Jean-Louis would problaby be able to confirm or deny.

Concerning the link between the mantlet and dabbaba, it's not very important but interesting. I've found it several times in historic contexts (Byzantium / Abassid / Mongol), so I thought I'd mention it, for food for thought.

I edited my previous post, for any who missed it.