Talk:Glossary of chess

The content of Overprotection was merged into Glossary of chess on February 12, 2011. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

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Cook

I changed the definition of "Cook", since: According to the British Chess Problems Society site http://www.bcps.knightsfield.co.uk/introduction.html, A cook is an unintended solution; also, it is is not a "second" solution, because certain types of problems have many times more than one intended solution.

Starting position

"Starting position" is not a chess-specific term. Every board game has one. Every manual tells what the starting position is (i.e. king on e1, queen on d1, etc.), but no manual defines the term "starting position". I don't think we should define it either. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:13, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. (No special meaning qualifying as a glossary term.) The term array is currently defined at end of gloss entry position. Perhaps the add'l phrases "initial position", ~~"starting position",~~ "original position" c/ be mentioned there!? --IHTS (talk) 02:54, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Actually the meaning of "starting position" is intuitively obvious since consisting of plain English words. Ditto "initial position" but a bit less obvious. Re "original position", it seems rarer but whenever/wherever used the context probably explains. --IHTS (talk) 03:01, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Schlechtester Zug

can someone add this to glossary please? pretty little used nowadays, but it has it's own notation symbol '???', and is still there in Arena Chess. It mean's Worst Move. Kempee (talk) 11:01, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Worst move" is just a straight translation. Is it really a technical term? MaxBrowne2 (talk) 11:46, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. But I find it odd that the root meaning of 'Zug' is "pull", when in chess and in many other boardgames, one tends to push the pieces away! UncleDumu (talk) 23:17, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can opener

Is this actually a chess term, or just a term invented by one author? Because I've never heard of it before. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 22:11, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here is the edit that added it to the glossary. It predates the book by Souleidis. Sorry, that isn't very helpful for finding a proper source, but it suggests that there must be something out there. There is a famous description of prying open the h-file in the Sicilian Dragon in Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games, game 2, but it doesn't mention can openers. Bruce leverett (talk) 23:01, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Suggest removal of entry 'reply'

Word 'reply' probably does not qualify as chess term for the glossary since it is a commonly understood word even in the context of chess. --IHTS (talk) 18:53, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I see that you just made an attempt to simplify this entry. But, OK with me if you remove it altogether. Not a technical term. Bruce leverett (talk) 20:19, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Expanding "sharp" entry

I'd like to expand this one a bit to mention something along the lines of sharp positions having many losing moves/few non-losing moves (open to any alternatives). Started off the discussion at User talk:Bruce leverett, which has our views on the matter. Dayshade (talk) 15:06, 10 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would add in response to the comments about sourcing, that adding more explanation as to what the words used in the definition mean would be acceptable. But if people insist, I could try to find another definition I think would have been more helpful to my younger self. Dayshade (talk) 15:14, 10 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]