Just a short notice for now: I would like to let you know that Fairy Classification project highly supported by Shankar Ram, Chris Tylor, Maryan Kerhuel is up and running. I was too busy with office work for some months, same as Shankar Ram. But Shankar has got back to activity faster than me, offering to us an updated Concept Map having in background 19 pages of the structured list of Fairy Elements I hope to present you later as well.
We will keep working and I’ll get back to you with some more presentation when ready!
A question about promotion to fairy pieces: If there is no Grasshopper in the initial position of a chess problem, is it legal to promote a pawn to a Grasshopper? I could not find any rules addressing this question in “Codex of Chess Compositions”.
The default is that one can promote to any non-royal piece present in the default set of the current condition (e.g. with orthodox chess S/B/R/Q, with CavalierMajeur N/B/R/Q, with LeoFamily MA/VA/PA/LE, with ChineseChess S/B/R/Q/MA/VA/PA/LE, with LosingChess S/B/R/Q/K, etc).
For additional extra promotions there are three options:
Difference between the first and second option: Suppose there’s exactly one grasshopper in the a) position, and the b) position changes this to a nightrider. In the first option, in a) only promotions to grasshoppper and in b) only to nightrider are allowed, in the second option, promotion to either nightrider or grasshopper are allowed in both a) and b).
Option 3 is e.g. for explicitly stating ‘promotion to grasshopper allowed’, even when there’s no grasshopper present in the diagram, or for Rex Multiplex, where the condition states that promotion to king is allowed (and this latter case explains why I talk about ‘extra’ and not ‘fairy’)
Dear Joost, thank you for the detailed explanation. With respect to the “first and second option”, how does a solver decide which option is allowed? Is it stated in the stipulation by the composer?
In Umwandlungen in Märchenfiguren, the difference is under the diagram (Umwandlungen Nur and Umwndlungen Auch). I don’t think there’s a default.
Amazing Fairy map !