Morgan,
Jim Muth wrote:
It's now Tuesday morning and sun is once again illuminating the area. I've got a bit of work to accomplish before I can call it a day, so until tomorrow and the next FOTD, take care, and has anyone considered a fractal chess set?
Dunno 'bout a fractal chess _set_, but suitable Julibrot slices might look good...
Clifford Pickover and I both independently thought of recursive chess, in which each square of the board is itself a board. Moves on the top level board are contingent on activities on boards at deeper levels, pieces could "push" themselves down on to deeper boards, or "pop" themselves up, etc. etc.
One could play an entire game on the square occupied by the piece that is to move, to decide whether or not the move is to actually go ahead. And of course, the moves of that game would be influenced by games played on it's squares...
This isn't so different from wargames, where action at the upper levels is contingent on interactions between subunits not shown expressly to the folk playing at the top level. Basically, war is a recursive wargame. Commercial wargames, particularly board wargames (more so than computer wargames) almost invariably represent explicitly several levels of interaction, rather than the single level of interaction that chess has. Mike