3036: Chess Zoo

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Chess Zoo

Title text: The zoo takes special care to keep kings separated from opposite-color pieces as part of their conservation program to prevent mating in captivity.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a AN ELABORATE CHESS JOKE- Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

A zoological garden, or zoo for short, is a large encampment where various animals are helped to live in small enclosures. Zoos generally serve the purposes of being: a public exhibition for amusement and education, a safe breeding ground for conservation efforts, and/or a home for animals that need rescue and rehabilitation.

Randall has here created a zoo for giant chess pieces, as if they were animals.

There are many subtle "jokes" in the image that play on how chess pieces move:

• Bishops can only move diagonally. Enclosures containing them do not have diagonal walls or corners which would allow them to slip out, and orthogonal portals into their enclosures are only one square wide and at least two squares long so that they can't get through. One bishop enclosure even has a portal open to the visiting people, letting it serve as a petting zoo. Opposing bishops can safely mingle as long as they are on opposite colors, since a bishop can never move to a square of the opposite color than the one on which it currently stands.
• Knights move in an "L" shape (two squares along a rank or file, then one square in an orthogonal direction), leaping over other pieces and presumably walls. The walls of their enclosures have been designed to prevent escape by placing blocks where they would land if they leapt over the wall, or using double-thick walls. They can also be blocked by the same portals that block bishops.
• Rooks can only move along ranks and files. They have free roam of several enclosures, though diagonal walls are able to stop them, preventing them from accessing the center mingling bishops.
• Queens and kings can move along ranks and files as well as diagonally, so their enclosures must have the same precautions as would be required for both bishops and rooks.
• Pawns can only move forward (or diagonally forward when capturing), but upon reaching the final rank (the opponent's back rank), they are "promoted," becoming a knight, bishop, rook, or queen. The pawns are in a double-walled enclosure with no doors to prevent escape after promotion.

Contrary to the comic's subtitle, there are a couple of "interaction" areas that could have been built into the zoo design while preventing piece capture or escape but have not. There is no reason why bishops and knights of the same color couldn't occupy the same enclosure, so long as there are adequate walls to prevent knights from escaping the "knight enclosure" (although then they would have to exclude the diametically opposite bishops, of opposing piece color and alternative square color, in a way this setup can allow, so the design is forced to settle upon no more than one of these 'mixes' in any given combi-enclosure). Additionally, it would be possible to allow visitor access to the white-bishop-on-black and black-bishop-on-white enclosure, as well as allow visitor access to the knight enclosures, however it is not apparent whether this is a priority of the zoo.

The entire comic is an elaborate setup to the title text's punchline chess joke. The phrase "mating in captivity" is typically used to refer to animals in zoos copulating, hopefully producing offspring. A reputable zoo will probably take care not to have too many unplanned cases of reproducing, for reasons of manageability and ensuring a properly thought out genetic diversity (including arranging selected animals, or a supply of gametes, being strategically exchanged with other zoos). In this case, however, "mating" is used in the chess context, meaning delivering an attack from which the opponent's king cannot escape. To prevent this from occurring, kings are not kept in the same enclosure as any piece of an opposing color. In fact, only opposing bishops on opposite colors are shown as unallied co-residents of an enclosure, in this zoo, thanks to their particular method of wall-free separation.

Every visitor of the zoo is depicted as centered on a single square occupied only by themselves, just like a chess piece. This could perhaps imply an entire chess board "world", where humans and chess pieces coexist as separate species, both aligned to the grid.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[Caption above a panel that contains a cut-off chessboard that is presumably at least 29x43 squares:]

Chess Zoo

Designed to give different types of pieces their own enclosures while letting them interact as much as possible without allowing captures

[A large picture with alternating black and white squares. Some squares have smaller black squares imposed on them. Other squares may have chess pieces or characters on them.]

[Banner above black squares on the top right:]

Banner: Shh! Pawns promoting.

[Jill near the center, standing in front of Blondie and pointing forward:]

Jill: Look, mommy! Bishops!

• Click for a visual representation of the comic:

[Layout (H is human; # is a smaller black square; chess pieces on the top half are black and below that white, unless otherwise noted):]

     HH H     HH   H HH    
 ######################### 
 #         #     ######### 
 #  K  K   # R   ##     ## 
 #      Q  #    R##P   P## 
H# #K#    R##### ## P   ## 
 ### ###       #R##  P  ## 
  ## ######    # ##   N ## 
 ### # #####   # ######### 
 H# K  #  #### #  ######## 
 ###  N#   #####     #   # 
  #    #  R      B   #   # 
 #######   ####     # B B#H
H #    # N N##   B R#    # 
 ### N #    ##      B# B # 
  #    #    ## #  #  #   # 
 ### # #N# ### ###B## #### 
  ###########  #   B#   B# 
   #H# # # # #R#    #    # 
              ##B   #  B #  [White bishops]
     H     HH     B #  B #  [Black bishops]
   HH        H##  B # B  #  [Left bishop: white, right bishop: black]
   # #H# #H# # # B  # B B# 
  ########### R#    #    # 
 ### # # # ### ## #### ### 
  #   N#    ## # #B   #  # 
 ###   #    ##R    R  #B #H
  #    #    ##   R B #   #H
 #######  R####      # B # 
  #    #          BB#    # 
 ###KN # N ##### B  #    # 
  #    #  #### #  ######## 
 ### # #####   # ######### 
 H## ######    # ##     ## 
 ### ###       # ##P    ## 
 # # #     #####R##     ## 
 #      Q K#     ## P  P## 
H# K       #  RR ##     ## 
 #  K      # R   ######### 
 ######################### 
     H       HHHH     H   

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Discussion

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)

Depends - they're only dangerous in the proselytising season.172.68.186.43 14:41, 13 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)

No because it a promoted queen can come into a zone with rooks then it can also get into the bishops room and then enter the opposing bishops room and take them and then get to take opposing rooks and knights as well. It would also be hard to keep knight's out of the opposing side if they get into the bishops area, it would take a lot of wall space. --Kynde (talk) 10:52, 12 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)

It would have to be a very restrictive zone. In the case of the 3x3 of 839: Explorers, any knight not on the centre-tile could technically take (or be taken by) any other such knight of that was also there (and not on the centre-tile). Though any knight in imminent danger could of course move to not be (the knight that posed the danger could then move to repose that danger, and they dance around the board in octagramish 'circuits'.

I would propose, though, that a limited-jump entry from two adjoining enclosures to land knights onto a 2x3 'shared enclosure' could work, such that they can't jump to any more thn their two opposite corners (thus also never jump out of it into the other's 'normal' enclosure). And, in my head, I'm imagning a form of zig-zagging diagonal that might extend the area without overlapping the (though intermingling, as with bishops) the viable landing zones. The following is a quick (and probably incorrect, if you spot the probable errors I've not handled correctly) method of mingling two sets of knights (1 & 2, mostly given free reign to top left and bottom right) between walls (#) and various other 'open' squares (.) that could be something else.

2222###........
2222#######....
#2###21#####...
#####122#1##..#
#.####212######
....###221###1#
.....###122#111
......###21##11
.......#####111
........#.#1111
.........###111

In fact, with a narrower corridor, I believe I could constrain two sets of knights to travelling mutually non-antagonistically across a nominally intermingled diagonalised 'neutral-zone', plus send a viable 'bishop corridor' (in fact multiple bishop-corridors!) across in the other diagonal, but then it'd have to be a far less generous pseudo-shared area for the knights, and wouldn't look even as good as the above. 172.68.205.123 00:11, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

You can have some interesting shaped-areas for knights too, not just corridors; you can trivially put two knights together by blocking one of them from moving at all, the interesting question is how to give them both the most freedom of movement, safely, and/or the minimum number of 'blocks' for a given area. e.g. [1] JeffUK (talk) 11:24, 13 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)

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[2]. D5xtgr (talk) 20:09, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

I have put the picture in a trivia section --Kynde (talk) 11:03, 12 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)

Look at the third visitor along at the 'top', then go straight down. Maybe less obvious as the dark pieces hide their internal details more, leaving just their fuzzy (depending on zoom level) outlines. 172.69.79.164 21:10, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

It looks like the transcript has switched the K's and Q's. The king is the piece with the cross on his crown. See Staunton chess set. --172.68.54.157 22:01, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

It’s too bad it couldn’t have somehow allowed castling, or maybe it could’ve just pretended it did. I would’ve appreciated title text that mentioned an incident involving a king escaping its enclosure despite their best efforts due to emergent behavior from unanticipated interaction between differing pieces and Jeff Goldblum saying that nature will find a way. SammyChips 18:00, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

If castling is only blocked by pieces and not walls, Black could still do it if neither the king not bishop to the right of it had moved previously 162.158.41.72 18:04, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

I believe the problem would be with the rook, which would need to occupy the wall space that the king skipped over, unless the process of castling was generalized some to allow different magnitudes of jumps, even if the requirement for lack of movement was ignored. SammyChips 18:23, 13 January 2025 (UTC)