written by Joćo Pedro Neto,
with
Claude Chaunier's
invaluable contribution
The place seemed quiet. The rare night welcomed both moons. Xlior, the largest, shined with a confusing mixture of reds and yellows from both Grut the Old, and Hurt the New, the Suns of this binary system. Zork landed the spaceship very softly into the golden desert.
"Nice place!" - said Turn.
"Sort of..." - replied Zork.
"What do you mean?"
"Kind of dangerous, but don't worry... It's night!"
"Night!!!? What makes it dangerous?" - asked Turn with some anxiety.
"Little bugs! Crawl in you legs, and NAG!" - Zork said that with a strange noise directly from his two hidronoizels.
"And we are here!?!?! How long is a night?"
"Never know... Binary systems have confusing days and nights!" - said Zork very seriously.
"You are kidding me, right?"
"Right!" - and Zork smiled with Turn's relief.
Turn walked into the ship, took the xhe'noh projector and created a set of chess boards within the virtual field of that strange artifact.
"A game?" - asked Turn.
"Sure! But what game?"
"Chess, of course!"
Zork seemed a little confused.
"I suppose you wanted to ask what chess variant?"
"Right!"
"Anyone! I always saw myself as a meta chess player! Give me the rules, and let's move on!" - said Turn in an exciting mood - "Well, I remember when I showed you the Hitchhiker's Guide, we were playing TIDE chess."
"FIDE!"
"Yeah, yeah... FIDE Chess. What about something for a change?"
"Ok for me! What are your thoughts?"
"I always wanted to play some Space-Time variants, but never had the change for it!"
"Why? No opponent?"
"Nope... No Time!"
Time is not an arrow or a river that never flows backwards. Time is the maker of worlds and galaxies, Time is the impenetrable white core of all black holes, it's the entropy that flows in your body and mind. But Time is also the most powerful entity that accepts any credit card to change direction for a week or two.
"Most games start from the beginning, right?" - asked Turn.
"Right! What else?"
"Ļ know one that does not!"
Progressive RetroChess by the CV community
"Wow! So you run faster and faster just to arrive at an initial setup?"
"Yes! It means twisting Time and making it go backwards!"
"Hmmm..."
"What?"
"Does that mean that Time Travel is possible?"
"Beats me, but the Guide should have something more to say about it!"
Time Travel is possible! Those who think that an impressive number of impossible paradoxes arise from that possibility are the same who thought that printing newspapers on strawberries was a ridiculous thing to do. They don't laugh now, after feeling the might of the Zillion Zorkmids of the Strawberry Industries and News (SIN) cartel.
[HG2C page -5]
The King's Time Escape by Claude Chaunier
"What does the introductory comment have to do with Chess or even Time Travel???" - asked Zork
"Oh... It's just a commercial banner from SIN! They do have a lot of money..."
Zork looked at his friend in surprise... Well, the Guide editors must make a living... - he thought
"Anyway," - he changed the subject - "are there other ways to see Time?"
"Sure!"
"How?"
"Well, Time is a kind of cake..."
"A Cake??"
"Well, kind of... It has layers... Time within Time within Time..."
Simulated Chess by Claude Chaunier
"And this can even go further!" -said Turn going to the next integer page.
Self-referential Chess by Claude Chaunier
"That“s strange..."
"What? Time layers?"
"No, comparing it with a cake!" - said Zork
"It“s just a narrow way to see it! The Guide talks a bit about this..."
Time is usually seen as a straight arrow moving forward. This movement metaphor is poor, since it only brings to the curious mind, the opposite sense of travel back in Time. However, there are other ways, like turning right or left, even go up or down in Time. Time does not have one single dimension, It can flow in different orthogonal ways at "the same time". This is an active field of study at VariantsTown, where many new games are prepared to represent this temporal complexity. Variants where one player goes backward with the two colors and the other forward with the two colors; where both players change direction at their convenience; or where white pieces always go forward and black pieces backward - like anti-matter which can be seen just as matter going backward. Time is just like a Cake!
[HG2C page 324+6.2i]
"But there is also a definitive way to see Time!"
"Yes?"
"Not seeing Time!"
One Shot Chess by Joćo Pedro Neto
. . q . . . . . . . R . . . . . . . r . . . . . . . r . . . . . . . n . . . . . . . n . . . . . . . p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Curious..." - commented Zork - "But, if we do not have Time, what else remains?"
Space is not continuous. Early civilizations called quanta some discrete parts of space. Deeper scientific theories have found that each quantum is made of squara (or squares) forming nxn boards. A quantum's behavior is defined by chess rules and specific game dynamics within its core. Quanta close together have similar game dynamics, but the rules are basically the same. What nobody knows is which variant Nature plays.
"Can quanta be divided?" - asked Zork absent-mindedly.
"Into smaller quanta, you mean?"
"Yes..."
"Well, no, that's why they call them Quanta." - Turn claimed.
"Hmm..." - Zork didn't look convinced.
"But we can split Pieces!" - Turn quickly added.
Fractional Chess by Claude Chaunier
r n b q k b n r p p p p p p p p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1O . . .1N . . . . .1N . . O O O1O O O O O R N B Q K B N R
Here is a small endgame example. White can win with the simultaneous B/2axc8 B/2dxc8:
If it is Black's turn however, Black may try to split and escape quickly, for example with K/8c7 K/8c6 K/8c5 K/8c4 K/8c3 K/8c2 K/8b8 K/8a8, but White can easily capture it all immediately. It seems better for the Black King to capture one half of a Bishop and to reunite itself with K/2xd5 K/2c8.. . k . . . . . . . . B/2 . . . . B/2 . . . K . . . . . . . B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"So Space is not only about boards, it's also about objects!" - said Turn.
"Of course! But there are also a lot of variants dealing with N-dimensional topologies!"
"I think there is something about that in the Guide" - Turn looked into the dimensional chapters of the HG2C and selected one little passage:
The default Chess board limits itself into two dimensions, those called ranks and columns. However, since Space is multidimensional, there is also a set of Chess games with other connections made between the squares where pieces lies. A simple sample are those variants where a third dimension is added. Some ancient legends talk about a game, in the Onyx system, with 65536 dimensions and just a King on each side. The looser is the player who, after some finite turns, cannot find his King on the board.
[HG2C page 681]
"Nice one!" - Zork laughed - "But I don't like those, I prefer the variants that change the way squares behave!"
"How?"
"Two examples:"
Queue Chess by Joćo Pedro Neto
Transport Chess by Joćo Pedro Neto
. . . . . . . . q k . . . . . . . . p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O . . . . . . . . Q K . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . . . . . O . . . . . . . . . x . . . . . . . N . . . . O . . . . . . . O Q . . . . . . . . N . r . . . . . K . R . . . Q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . K . R . . . . . . . . . . .
"So, you say that you redefine the squares, but what you are doing is changing the board topology into some invisible ways."
"I suppose, but many connections between things are invisible!"
"True, true!"
"But, check this one:"
Scaling Chess by Joćo Pedro Neto
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . k . . . . . . . k . . . . . . . . r . . . . . . . r . . . . . . . . . . . . N-N . . . . . . N . . . . . . . N-N . . . . K . . . . . . . K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Some notes:
"Curious... Now, there is no strange topology, but a different way for the pieces themselves to see Space."
"Yes! On this game, the Universe stretches and shrinks upon request."
"Even the other pieces change sizes - from their point of view of course!"
"When speaking of Chess, that's all it matters!"
The Universe is a global entity that surrounds everything! In a sense, the Universe IS everything. But in the other sense (if there were just two senses...), the Universe is how YOU see it, nothing more, nothing less. So, in principle, the way you see it can change the Universe, if you know how. If not, you had better change the spaceship's trajectory when a massive meteor is coming your way!
[HG2C page 76576]
"But, the pieces can be just that, simple concepts that obey the rules of their strange Universe!"
"Sure! Read this text and this variant:"
Boards are the archetype of Space. Different boards reflect on different Universe topologies, and their connectivity induces the Laws that shape that Universe. Despite the fact that square boards are the best approximation to our daily life, galactic travels showed in practice that our own conceptual boards are not plane! After many theoretical efforts to explain this curvature in Space-Time, the only possible explanation surfaced the sky of VariantsTown - the curvature has its source in the overweight of the two fat Kings that are playing the game governing our entire Universe.
[HG2C page 365 1/4]
Rotating Chess by Joćo Pedro Neto and Claude Chaunier
Eg, r . b q k b n r r p . . . . O R R Q B K Q B N R | p p p p p p p p . p . . . . O . O . O O . O O O v . . n . . . . . b p n . . N O B . . N . . . . . black . . . . . . . . k p . . . . O K . . . . O . . . . . . O . . . . => q p . . O . . Q => . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . b p n . . . O B . . n . . n . . white O O O . O O O O . p . . . . O N p p p p p p . p ^ R N B Q K B N R r p . . . . O R r . b k q b q r | 1. d4 Nc6 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. g1=Q b1=Q ...
Some notes:
"I suppose that if they were able to, all those pieces would get some odd laws of Nature to explain the behavior of their Universe!" - commented Zork.
"Is'n it exactly what we do?" - said Turn in a whisper - "And that reminds me of something else!"
A chess King read an old book, where a Red Queen, in order to exercise her mind, thought daily about a couple of impossible things just before breakfast. For his royal intellect, he thought, that would be easy to do and he started to create impossible games to see his servants play them. After some months of hard times trying to learn and waste time with those strange games, his Minister approached the King and said the following: "Your Majesty, I'm very happy about your ideas and wonderful games, but isn't that a trivial task for someone so wise and powerful? You, my Liege, could aim at higher goals!". The King was surprised. "What is more difficult than an impossible game?", he asked. "Creating a number of possible rules to achieve an impossible game is hard, but creating an impossible number of rules to achieve a possible game is even harder!", the Minister answered. "I have an idea", the King said, "I will create an impossible number of rules to define a possible game". "Magnificent idea, my King", the Minister said, "You are a true genius!", "I know, my honest Minister, I know...". Then the King went to his castle and stayed there until the brightest Sun of the System got old and red and hotter, expanded and consumed his world, the castle, the King and the fading memory of his wise Minister.
[HG2C page 3.14159265...]
"paradox?" - said Zork
"Paradox!"
"What?"
"You said Paradox with a lowercase p"
"Er... What do you mean by that?"
"Never mind!"
...
Sidestepping Chess by Claude Chaunier
"That reminds me of an eternal cycle, a kind of perpetual momentum machine" - said Zork
"Indeed it does! Or an infinite hole, where pieces always return after falling!"
"Paradox!"
"You got it right, this time!"
The Looping Flow of Chess by Claude Chaunier
"These are weird games!" - commented Zork after trying to imagine how he may play them.
"You didn't see anything yet!"
The Infinite Array of Possible Pawns by Joćo Pedro Neto
. . . r n b r n b q k b n r b n r . . . . . . p p p p p p p p p p p p p p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . infinite number of lines... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O O O O O O O O O O O O O O . . . . . . R N B R N B Q K B N R B N R . . .
Some notes:
"This is getting too weird!" - said Zork.
"Well, and we just started..." - answered Turn moving his hand into the gold sand - "Have you ever wondered that an Holobook may always have a page between any two pages?"
"How is that?"
"Check this Guide section: Between pages 8201 and 8202, there is an addendum numbered 8201 1/2"
"Ok! And so what?"
"So, check what is on the left side of page 8201 1/2!"
Zork pressed the left button. Page 8201 appeared!
"No, no" - said Turn, "Use the Cantor left button. No... yes, that one!"
Page 8201 1/4 appeared.
"Now, once more!"
Page 8201 1/8.
"Now turn back a couple of times!"
Pages 8201 3/16, 8201 7/32 and 8201 15/64 showed their unique faces.
"What happened? From where all these pages came from?"
"Addendums of addendums of addendums... Don't worry, that's why there is the Natural forward and backward buttons in the Guide. If you only had the Cantor buttons, and started at page 1, you would never get to page 2."
"Is that true?"
"Well, you would need a pretty impressive number of eons to do that!" - said Turn in a grin. He opened his hand, dropping myriads of sand particles and returning them to the vast golden desert.
The Endless Fountain of Lost Columns by Joćo Pedro Neto
r n k q b p p p p p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O O O O O R N K Q B
. . . k . . . . . k . . r b . . . r b b . . . . . n . . . . . n . . . . . . . . . . . . . O p . . => . O . p . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . O . . O . . O . . . R K . . . R R K . . ^
Variant:
Some notes:
"That's a melancholic-oriented game..." - added Turn.
"A what?"
"To those people that feel a deep melancholy about something in the past"
"That's a way to classify games?"
"Sure! Why not? Imagine: you can classify games by goal, by move attributes, by board topology, or even by color!"
"Color?"
"TrexMex Chess must be played with yellow Bishops, or else..."
"Don't tell me!"
"Right! Anyway, classifying games by your mental mood is a way to place the importance where it belongs: you!"
"I suppose there are games for love and for rage!"
"More for rage than for love..." - Turn looked into the dark sky - "but yes, there are!"
"Let me check the Guide!"
Clone and Destroy by Joćo Pedro Neto
note: The Knight is a very powerful piece in this variant
"Wanna play?" - asked Turn
"No! No!"- said Zork - "And what about love?"
"Here is a good example"
Romeo and Juliet by Joćo Pedro Neto
"So, each Queen is in love with the other King?" - said Zork.
"I guess so! There is also a component of envy, but that always comes along with love..."
"Who are those guys?" - asked Zork.
"If I recall well, it's a story written by William Othello, who lived on Elsinore. These are two people that met and fall in love during a Tempest on a ship with a lot of mad and crooked Kings!"
"Oh, a Chess story!"
"What else?"
Turn switched on the mentu-arkanoid, the antigravitical auxiliar device, and the spaceship traveled in a complete silence through the empty darkness of the Planet. The wind welcomed their faces, and they felt the softness of the moment. After a while, Zork said:
"That method is interesting. See how you feel and pick the appropriate game!"
"There is always the possibility that your opponent mood is different from yours. That's why there are some games with different setups and rules for each player. Anyway, it's a price to pay for such an absorbing classification. Some games are hybrids, they fall into two categories of games."
"There are shades of gray between classes?"
"Sure! There are always enough shades to surprise anyone of us!"
Life does not fit on just Black and White. Since mixing is possible and often occurs, an infinite set of shades populate the Universe and Everything (and that means a lot of things!). Amazingly, this is a territory yet to be discovered on the world of CVs, just compared to the potential market for spherical bananas!
[HG2C page 10000]
Shades of Gray by Joćo Pedro Neto
"Don't forget one thing!" - said Zork, after reading the rules.
"What?"
"Shadows!"
Light and Shadows by Joćo Pedro Neto
note: Since Kings are not limited by dark/light forces, they may
be useful to enlighten/darken nearby square areas.
note: To
play, you may use an extra chess board and a
set of small numbered pieces of paper to record the square's LV.
"Shades are everywhere!" - said Zork seeing a thin horizontal line of light on the horizon
"The Candle or the Sun fighting darkness inside a circle of light!" - answered Turn with an ancient almost forgotten sentence
"Or the opposite!"
"How?"
"The Dark Matter that fights light inside a circle of darkness."
"Are you mentioning Black Holes?"
A Black Hole is a place where all the White squares has been removed from the local representational Chess board. That means that almost no Chess games can be represented, and so, almost all Laws of Nature collapse! By the Law of Symmetry, there must also be some places where no Black squares exist, creating White Holes. Some primitive civilizations thought that would be the Quasars, but that's not true! White Holes, for some unknown reason are not known in this Galaxy! This may be a fantastic statistical shift. Another theory says that White Holes may be inside Black ones, by some other force that needs to be explained or even found!
[HG2C page 999]
Relentless Black Hole Chess by Joćo Pedro Neto
"Captured by the Universe..."
"Well, Turn, remember when I said that I was kidding?"
"Yes?"
"I was kidding about not knowing when the night ended, not about the deadly crawling daylight bugs!"
Hurt's light started to appear in the southern horizon. The night was fading away...