Talk:3036: Chess Zoo

For the transcript, I’m thinking of saying that “there are alternating white and grey squares, with smaller black squares imposed on them. The pattern of squares goes [something like GWBWGWBWGBW]“. Would that work? Or is it too confusing? 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 19:03, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Re: "GWBWGWBWGBW", knowing who we are here, I presume people might want to distinguish black-on-white from black-on-gray. We'd probably have to have a full markup system for background (gray/white) and foreground (empty, human, barrier, white pawn, gray pawn...). Maybe something like {[gE][wE][gB][wQg]}... Hrm... Because, of course, it has to be as complicated and precise as possible. :) 172.70.46.135 19:15, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

I don’t really like the current transcript because I believe that it’s more confusing to read than my version. Anyone have thoughts? 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 23:28, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Although I do have a suggestion for the transcript: instead of having “H” as a representation of a human, we can have C for Cueball, H for Hairy, P for Ponytail, W for White Hat, D for Danish, M for Megan, and K for Knit Cap. We could also have Unicode black squares instead of the “#” and color the pieces with span. Thoughts? 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 00:14, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't think it's safe to allow people to go into the bishop enclosure, especially with high aggression in that area since both colors are able to look at each other there but not capture. One of those bishops is eventually going to take it out on someone. --162.158.90.210 19:34, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't know how dangerous they are to visitors in general, but I wouldn't leave children with them unattended. Maybe the enclosures with the knights would be good petting zoos. Barmar (talk) 19:49, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for reporting the bishop feeding gate being open, as this was the fifteenth time the one responsible failed to close it after feeding, he has been summarily fired.172.70.47.106 20:02, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

The zoo seems to be missing an area for knights and bishops to interact. (It has a knight/queen area, a knight/rook area, and a rook/bishop area. It can't have queen/rook or queen/bishop areas if it wants to have areas for rooks or bishops that exclude queens, because nothing blocks queens without blocking rooks and bishops. But it could have a knight/bishop mingling area, accessible to knights via wall-jump and to bishops via a diagonal corridor, and it doesn't.) 162.158.187.84 20:07, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Similarly, couldn't the pawn promoting zones be more centrally located each side, and have passages respectively for queens/rooks and for knights? Of course then those could enter and interact with promoting pawns, but why would that be deemed a problem? --172.69.222.164 20:41, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

I believe a knight-knight interaction zone of opposing colors is also possible if correctly designed (such as a 2xn corridor with a particular entrance 162.158.154.52 03:11, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't have permissions to upload an image to this wiki, but if anyone who does would like to copy it over, I illustrated each piece's range of movement here[1]. D5xtgr (talk) 20:09, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

You can't have same-coloured knights also enter into an opposites-of-bishop shared space, because for all the wish to have shared (overlapping but not congruent) spaces for pieces of the same colour but different limitations, the presence of the anti-bishops would mean contention with the pro-knights.

The fact tht the pawn-enclosures are totally without any same-set pieces (well, apart from the knight, but that was from a promotion) does seem to suggest there's a lack of possible mixing going on, I know. But, the way I read it, if heterochromic pieces can be 'mixed', then they can (which effectively is just the two different ecclesiastical compliments), with homochomic ones then also being allowed to mix if they can do so in a way such that they have all of an "A and B" area, an "A-only" area and a "B-only" area (it's a bit more complicated than that with the kings and queens, as they can traverse all of the same areas as each other, plus the lobe of knight-area which overlaps, but you have "knight+royal", "royal-only" and "knight-only").

Though I can think of one such sharing-situation I would mark down as missed: i.e. a pawn sharing a space with bishops and/or knights with a bishop-/knight-proof corridor 'directly forward' (and, of course, no sideways movement allowed by the pawn), giving the pawn both its unique space and shared space and only-the-other-piece spaces off to the sides. Though, the whole promotion prospects means that just about anything could 'suddenly' be in the pawn-only space, thus sending potential knights/bishops into that 'by proxy'.

...or maybe I've not extrapolated Randall's precise methodology here, but I believe I've accounted the general limitations he seems to have worked to. 162.158.33.215 00:57, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

The plan of the zoo looks like opposing Lewis Chess Men! Nicholasbailey87 (talk) 23:28, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

the transcript needs to be descriptive rather than a text-based diagram so it's screenreader accessible. if someone thinks it's necessary they can move the ascii art to the description. 172.68.71.101 23:40, 10 January 2025 (UTC) A knight recently escaped. When asked for comment, the director of the zoo said "!?" 172.68.70.134 01:07, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

This is actually a sokoban chess puzzle, where the pieces can push the blocks. White to move and mate in 47.172.70.214.205 02:40, 11 January 2025 (UTC)NickM

In the UK there is a famous zoo called "Chester Zoo", comic readers from the UK will think there is a pun.--Doctormo (talk) 03:46, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

In Russian, chess knights and bishops are literally called horses and elephants. 172.71.148.59 10:40, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't think that the 'same portals that block bishops' can block knights, not without being longer. A knight could get through the 'petting zoo' portal to the bishop paddock. But there's another example below and to the left of a similar portal but much longer that DOES prevent the knights from passing. 172.71.194.90 14:21, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Do I need new glasses or did the black king escape? 162.158.95.97 17:15, 11 January 2025 (UTC)