Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 November 28

= November 28 =

Picture of a chess queen
How come the image of a chess queen on a 2D image looks so different from a real chess queen?? Look at:

and at:

Why are they look so different?? Georgia guy (talk) 01:56, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * This looks like a job for . ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:15, 28 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I haven't thought about it much, but the king and queen are represented by their crowns. A bishop is represented by the mitre.  Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:42, 28 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Also, in three dimensions, the height of a chess piece serves as an indicator of its importance (king > queen > bishop > knight > rook > pawn). That's missing when you remove the "height" dimension to get down to two. - Nunh-huh 03:50, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Not exactly. A rook is more important than a knight or bishop, and a knight can be more important than a bishop. Makers of chess sets that don't know anything about chess make the rook small.  In good sets, the rook is a little taller than the knight, but never as tall as the bishop. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 04:03, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * "...Following the old rule, the height of the chess pieces should then...decrease in such a manner that if one drew a diagonal from the top of the king to a pawn, the tops of all the other pieces must be touched by this line." fiveby(zero) 17:09, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * How the chess piece called the queen is represented in computer imagery and in physical chess pieces is arbitrary, but strongly subject to social conventions. Please see Board representation (computer chess) for representation on the screen and Staunton chess set for the style of physical chess pieces developed in 1849 and now used in approved chess competitions worldwide. What both representations have in common for the queen is a symbol of a royal crown, but crown design is also arbitrary. If a chess set used in casual play has queens topped by the letter "Q" or a sphere or a triangle or a photorealistic 3D printed representation of Elizabeth II at age 26 or at age 94, then that is perfectly acceptable as long as both players understand that this piece is the queen. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  03:55, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Because it's only a symbol.--Shantavira|feed me 10:01, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * These conventional symbols must predate chess-playing computers; they were used in chess textbooks when I was a lad; computers then struggled to play noughts-and-crosses. We have an article, Chess symbols in Unicode, but no clue as to the origin. Alansplodge (talk) 13:59, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Our History of chess article has a picture of some not too dissimilar symbols published in 1497 which is a LOT earlier than I was expecting. Alansplodge (talk) 14:06, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

As some evidence of the link between symbol and shape, we see that most game diagrams prior to 1820 had employed as symbol for the Queen a closed crown. Roughly thirty years before the development of the Staunton design, chess books increasingly began to use a coronet for the Queen: this is a signal difference marking the Staunton design of chess sets for play apart from all other chess sets., but see the footnote. fiveby(zero) 17:09, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

The diagram pieces are similar to those used in figurine algebraic notation. Physical chess pieces have a few different designs, but in Western sets, the king usually has a cross on top while the queen has a pointy crown. I don't think the queen is even always called the queen: in German, it's "Dame" ("lady"), hence de:Damengambit = Queen's Gambit etc., while in Russian it's "Ferz" (vizier, an advisor to the king). It would be nice to have more photos of different set designs. I see we have an article Dubrovnik chess set which has some pictures comparing this old design to the Staunton pieces we are used to in the West. 2601:648:8202:96B0:25EB:282F:5576:C543 (talk) 23:34, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * In French, the queen is also called dame. Interestingly, the bishops there are fous ("fools") – I don't know if this represents a French anticlerical sentiment. At Wiktionary you can see more translations (press "show" if they are not visible). As to finding images, Wikipedia has a category Chess sets, and Wikimedia Commons has its own category Chess sets, which has images of many designs. --Lambiam 14:23, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Being pedantic, the queen has a coronet while the king has a crown. Alansplodge (talk) 13:11, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think the queen is being pedantic in wearing a coronet. She is just wearing what the designer saw fit to put on her head; having been designed without arms, she can't take it off. --Lambiam 14:24, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Eats shoots and leaves :-) Alansplodge (talk) 15:47, 1 December 2020 (UTC)


 * In Ukrainian, the bishop is called the 'слон', which means elephant.Hayttom (talk) 15:58, 1 December 2020 (UTC)