Looney Labs Something Mailing list Archive

RE: [Something] Sz'kwa...

  • From"Dan Isaac 2" <disaac2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • DateThu, 13 Apr 2006 12:34:49 -0400
Pat,
 
I don't think that the Tafl games are what Laurie and her sister are looking for. Those games are based on moving pieces around on a board to try to either escape or capture your opponent (depending on which side you are playing).
 
However, from the websites I have found regarding Sz'Kwa it does look much more like Go, which is a game of placing pieces onto a board to create capture by surrounding opponents pieces. The placed pieces never move other then to be removed when they are captured.
 
Here are the two main sites that I found about Sz'Kwa, and if you know how to play Go, these sites seem to give enough info to play Sz'Kwa.
 
http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=1196&part=index&refpage=monthindex.php
http://senseis.xmp.net/?SzKwa
 
It is definitely a much simpler game then Go, as the board is much smaller, you don't need to worry about territories, and you do not need to worry about rules like Ko since you have a limited number of pieces.
 
Here is a site which talks about teaching Go, but it is more geared to telling people who already know how to play how to teach new people how to play. I'm not certain if there is enough information on the site to teach a person from scratch though. But you would only need to learn the stuff discussed in "Stage 1" to play Sz'Kwa.
 
 
Note that the site say to teach Go using a 9x9 board. That would be 81 positions, versus the the 21 positions that there are on the Sz'Kwa board. A full Go board is 19x19. That's 361 playing positions.
 
If you are unable to learn the basic rules of Go from that site (and thus learn Sz'Kwa), I am certain that people here (myself included) could help with more details.
 
Another source of info might be to try to contact the Author of the book "Alien IQ Test". There is a chapter in that book called "Hyperdimensional Sz'Kwa". He might be able to provide additional information about the basic game.
 
Hope that helps.
 
- Dan
 
P.S.> I would imagine that it would be pronounced similar to "Tsa Kwa" since it appears to be a South Taiwan game. And from one source I saw, it might translate to something like "Four Directions." Also, there seems to have been a discrepancy on the number of starting stones (either 20 or 25 each).
 
-----Original Message-----
From: something-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:something-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Pat
Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2006 12:23 AM
To: General Wunderland.Com Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Something] Sz'kwa...

Closest thing I could find so far...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hnefatafl

Does that help at all?

_pat

On 4/12/06, Laurie J. Rich <knitmeapony@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello!

My sister is a content editor at a math company, and she's looking for details (particularly pronunciation, but rules/play as well) for a game that she says is somewhat similar to Go and is called Sz'kwa.  Does anyone know of this game, or where I could find out more?  The few sites I found when I googled weren't terribly detailed -- my guess is that there's more than one way to spell the anglicisation.

Laurie

--
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
April 16, 1953

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