<Josh> had to use a <stunted double> for <Searching for Bobby Fischer> because he was too tall by the time they started filming.

TWELVE ANGRY MEN starring Fischer, Fischer, Fischer, Fischer, Fischer, Fischer, Fischer, Fischer, Fischer, Fischer, Fischer, Fischer, and a special appearence by Nigel Short as a wastepaper basket.

Frog Chess is played with just two types of piece: Frogs and Pawns.

The Pawns start on the usual squares, a2/h2 and a7/h7, and behave exactly as in standard chess.

The Frogs are arrayed in place of the usual pieces, occupying the 1st and 8th ranks.

The trick is that one Frog actually is a Queen, one a King, 2 bishops, 2 knights, 2 rooks. At the start of the game you know what your own layout is, but not your opponent's. You have to wait for a piece to move to be certain what it is: and even then the piece going from b1 to b4 could be a rook or a queen; the piece going from h1 to g2 might be king, bishop, queen. Only knights are unambiguous.

You need a referee as in kriegspiel, or at least a neutral 3rd party who will randomize the initial placements -- obviously they can't be symmetrical. And then keep track of their movements, to make sure a piece moves as it's meant to.

Mystery Frog <d1-e3>

If long wordy preambles full of verbiage won't work, why do I bother with all this pussyfooting?

I have a file for this stuff, provisionally entitled 'in case of nuking'. But I think I'll change it, in hommage to Marcel Duchamp: <In Advance of the Broken Arm>.

Checking now. Hard to say exactly how many arms have been broken, or at least severely twisted. And I'm probably due for a rap on the knuckles again.

This time I have witnesses. Don't I?

Out here in the real (heh) world I'm surrounded by cretins with 19-word vocabularies, including one v-v-very f-f-flexible adjective.

I try to be a b-bit more adjectivally inventive, and what do I get? Censored, is what. Again.

I appreciate the "children" argument, but -- as Nimzo pointed out -- there is also such a thing as Overprotection.

And there's such as thing as being so firkin cryptic that the little tykes won't understand.

Speaking of which, I had an amazing experience on a train yesterday with a screaming child and some undercover fuzz. I'll tell you about it later when I calm down.

I don't see how it's different from the post you made.

Perhaps some pre-emptive cleaning in order? Feel free to zap any of my posts <Dom>.

'Das ist mir wurst.'

Frog chess, groovy. I used to clean up at beer-fuelled three minute OTB shadow chess, but this is a whole different kettle of pish. I happen to think that the only chess variants worth playing are ones that still keep the rules of chess intact, so I'll give this a go. Stupid variations like kamikaze billiard chess can take a running jump.

<And I'd make an excellent dryer, all these gusts of hot air. We should get together and become an appliance.>

Urgh. Didn't the B-52's write a song about that?

<But I can't really pretend to have had much personal contact with the music world.>

Pff. Wander around Chalk Farm on a Friday night and you'll almost certainly end up buying chips for a minor member of an even more minor indie band from the early '90s. Top tip there, kids.

1.Fd1-e3

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Right, I'm guessing that that's a Knight. (Yes, *all* the Frogs look like Knights... but that's just cos FENs do horsies but not batrachians...)

1...e7-e6 (French, naturally)

[emmm... who's the ref? who knows where the pieces *really* are? oh, who bloody cares?]

click for larger view

The very first album -- as in long-playing vinyl LP record -- that I ever bought was 'Taproot Manuscript' by Neil Diamond, purchased in a strange shop in Ostend, Belgium in 1971. Or so. In fact it was too advanced for me: one side had pop/rock songs like "Cracklin' Rosie" -- but the other was a conceptual thingy with lyrics in Swahili... sort of Paul Simon meets Fela Kuti meets Peter Gabriel meets Riverdance, at least ten years before anyone had heard of 'world music'.

There was also a beautifully pompous sleeve note from Mr Diamond -- on fake yellow manuscript paper inside the gatefold sleeve, naturally missing from later releases -- which talked about rock'n'roll and gospel and rhythm'n'blues and his artistic search for the roots of his music:

"And I found them. And they were in Africa. And they left me breathless."

Neil Diamond, avant-blues artiste, purveyor of world music, and Tin Pan Alley's answer to Henry Morton Stanley? Funny how a guy's career can change direction -- even if he did go to school with Bobby Fischer and Barbra Streisand. All three with a marked tendency to overcharge for their gigs.

Anyhow, Diamond's next album was called 'Stones' -- "Stones would play inside her head", whatever that means. But it had covers of songs by Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, so I found two new idols to pursue instead...

It doesn't matter, though, because around here the merest word or phrase will prompt undiluted autobiography, just like with Dr. Who earlier. V for variety.

Speaking of the Doc, I was reminded of this fascinating post by IM Lawrence Day from a couple of years back...

<I encountered a theory that Dr. Who was based on a real life person, Dr. John Wu who had a long adventuresome life circa 1900-2000. I forget the details but by the time the series was created he was a judge at the Hague World Court, having previously co-authored the Taiwanese Constitution, been their Ambassador to the Vatican, escaped rambunctious Maoists, explained Zen to Westerners (The Golden Age of Zen) and Christianity to Easterners in his hobby as a translator. Quite the magic phone booth indeed!>

Top (pot?) bloke, our Lawrence.

Surely the potential for decoys is what will make frog chess so exciting, ref or no ref.

I suppose so long as you maintained consistency, and perhaps wrote down your back rank and buried them with Dr Black's murderern at the start of the game, you could do it without a third party.

(a) Chez Dom Frog -- guilty, m'lud, though not all the autobiography is strictly mine -- sometimes I practice fiction while 'building up' an 'identity' for a 'character'...?

(b) Chez CG in general? I reckon there are auto-zones and non-auto-zones... and those of you/us with identities pasted on your profiles may encourage the autobloggers...

(c) This inter-cyber-net place overall? Ditto. Some folk are eager to spill their stories... endlessly...

So, um, what? You got me on Diamond: no confession required. But they say a good interrogator gets his subjects begging to squeal before he even puts the question... this process interests me.

'Putting the Question' ... wasn't that the phrase the inquisition used with Galileo? Meaning simply to point out the instruments of torture and give a brief verbal description of their possible uses.

I admit to logorrhea (?) anyway. In between posts here I've been off writing two or three other things -- on a laptop, and one on actual paper with a pen.

And I'll have more to say on that 2...Qe7 Nirogichu Defence when the mood takes me. It takes long enough to catch up round here without being sidetracked by spurious belts of fake true autobiography.

- I'm bettin' that's a king on h5, pardner.

- You think? Why not slide up that queen from g8 and checkmate it then, mate?

- What queen? You been taken in so easy by my old castle there, eh?

- 500 bucks, says it's a queen!

- Darn, you win, guess I'll just mate you with it, huh?

- Not this time [*captures queen with double bluff*]

Lord, lord, you don't mean Pudovkin's 1925 masterpiece <Chess Fever> aka <Shakhmatnaya Goryachka>, do you?

Me too. Had a dodgy lasagne last night.

I meant a) Chez Frog, of course. We're like one of those little secret societies in pre-revolutionary Russia that yacked a lot about life & libido, and then made a very half-arsed attempt at an uprising. Baggsie Ryleyev.