[pbmserv] New FloopRail Board 101 barticus

[Randall Bart <barticus@att.net>]

F L O O P R A I L F L O O P R A I L
F L O O P R A I L F L O O P R A I L
F L O O P R A I L F L O O P R A I L
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        | | | | | F | | |
        | | | | | | L | |
        | | | | | | | O |
        | | | | | | | | O
        P | | | | | | | |
        | R | | | | \ | |
        | | A | | |  \| |
        | | | I | \   \ |
        | | | | L  \  |\|
        | | / | |   \ | \
        | |/  / |   F | |\
        | /  /  /   | | | \
        |/| /  /    | | | L
        / | I /     | | | |
       /| | | L     | | | |
      / | | | |     | | | |
      A P R I L     F O O L

If you still haven't caught on, it's Checkers (Draughts) rotated 45 degrees.

Tongue twister:  Say "FloopRail" six times fast.

                      History of FloopRail

The idea of rotating Checkers 45 degrees must have occurred to me over 25 
years ago, but the rest dates back only to February 1999.  After just a 
couple weeks of playing games here at gamerz.net, I decided I wanted to 
bless you all with an April Fool gag.  I remembered that old idea of 
rotating Checkers, so I dowloaded the existing checkers rules published on 
gamerz.net, with the intent of doing only the changes necessary for the 
rotation.

The first thing I realized I needed was a name.  I remembered a Scientific 
American article about an ancient digital calculator built by the 
Apraphulians in the Pulleg Mountains.  I decided a name based on April Fool 
was a good choice.  I spent a day anagraming and came up with FloopRail.

From there the rules almost wrote themselves.  I was trying to hold as 
close as possible to the existing Checkers rules.  I needed to remove some 
stuff about alternate square numbering, and American and British and 
International, and the rest should be minor modification.

But I realized that to sell the gag I needed to make the name FloopRail 
meaningful.  For "Rail" I decided to make the board out of dots connect by 
lines, and I called the pieces "Floops".  Then I realized that I could 
replace the word "jump" with "Fleap" (an obvious portmanteau of "Floop" and 
"Leap") and then a regular move became "Floop" and a man changed from 
"Floop" to "Flooper".  When I got to the part about kings, the term 
"SooperFlooper" was too obvious to pass by.

With one exception, I replaced the word "move" with "Floop or 
Fleap".  Why?  It sounds silly.  Silly is good for a gag.  I also found 
myself changing the wording of the original rules for a reason I hadn't 
expected:  The existing language isn't rigorous.  E.g., the Checkers rules 
say "Reverse Checkers: the winner is the first player to lose all their 
pieces."  This should be the first player with no legal move.  Also the 
following never mentions _opponent's_ piece:

>   Checkers move 1 space diagonally forward, or jump diagonally forward
>   over an adjacent piece to an empty space immediately beyond. The piece
>   which is jumped over is captured. A series of jumps with the same
>   piece may be done in a single turn.

Feel free to distribute the rules to FloopRail anywhere you like, 
particularly next April Foolst.