Stating this Ruleset as Compactly as Possible

[Mr. Mormon]

The lack of additional colors in the equipment forbids the interpretation of possibly more colors. "Quit" and "avoid" are shorter words than their alternatives, and connotations shouldn't affect factual meaning. Beginners would probably never want to play Go again if they had to go (see what I did there?) by CMNZR! Turn alternation is also implied by "avoid board states of One's past turns" and "if Black had no first free turns". I suppose it's not obvious enough that I'm associating alternation with the actual definition of the repeated word "turn", as opposed to using "turn" to specify the actions specific to one player in a simul-turn? How about this - turns cannot be simultaneous because cases like hyperpape's graphic and both players wanting to play in the same place are obviously not handled.

As for how to tackle rule 2, could you please define "poorly"? With an alternate consistent interpretation, or syntactically incorrect English, or...?

You're being a big help, though. Thanks.

[hyperpape]

@MrMormon Reread my post. Both marked stones count as being captured according to the quoted passage. According to one interpretation of what you have written, they should then sequentially be removed.

Edit: if this helps, note that the passage I am quoting treats "capturing" and "removing" as different actions. A stone becomes captured at an earlier step in the rules application, and only later is removed.

[HermanHiddema]

• If the equipment implies things, there is no need to specify the colors "Black, White, etc.". Also the rules would be valid anyway with blue and yellow. So you could replace that with "players".
• NZ rules have no resignation in them, why add it?
• using "own" instead of "One's" is shorter and more natural.
• "intersection" could be "grid point", which naturally allows you to reuse "point" later
• The capture rule is clumsily stated, I would use chains if I were you.

So you can go with something like:

1. Players pass or put an own piece on an empty grid point, connecting any adjacent own pieces into a chain, then remove other's chains without adjacent empty points, then own, without repeating previous states.

[Mr. Mormon]

@hyperpape

Ah, you're right. Simul-cap is handled. I still don't see how you think any stones could be captured and not removed the same turn, though. But I still think the alternation of turns is established.

@HermanHiddema

"Black, White, etc." serves the purpose of specifying the first player while hinting at alternation. Resignation - I'll get back to that. Isn't that grammatically incorrect to say own instead of one's own? "grid point" is shorter than "intersection", nice - I won't replace "spots" with "points" too though, since that would negate the two characters saved. I can't describe chains with "adjacent" because diagonals could be interpreted as such.

I added resignation as a personal choice of what the ruleset should accomplish. I know one could justify that if someone quits, no ruleset can tell them otherwise. But some things show poor sportsmanship while others are accepted. One could also say that cheating without being caught is implicitly allowed. Some games revolve around cheating. This game is about exactly what is allowed. That's just my view.

[palapiku]

I don't think anyone can read that and understand it without already knowing the rules of go. In which case, here's an even more compact description, for someone already familiar with the NZ ruleset:












.

[snorri]

Beginners would probably never want to play Go again if they had to go (see what I did there?) by CMNZR!

Okay, so we are starting to clarify what your intended audience is, and that it does not include beginners. That's okay, there are plenty of rule texts in the world that are not accessible to beginners. But does your audience include the following?

1. Go rules experts.
2. Ordinary go players experienced with rulesets other than NZ.

I can't speak for go rules experts as I am not one. So I don't know if compact language is of value to them. I fall into category 2) and the issue there is that too much compactness gets in the way of clarity.

It would help me at least if I understood your motivation better. Do you want to put the rules on a t-shirt or something? Maybe game theorists have an extensive-form represenation of NZ rules already that could compress well, if human comprehension is not your goal.

[Mr. Mormon]

It's literally just for my own interest. It's a challenge/theoretical problem. How many characters does it take to express MNZR in English. I already know I can replace "intersection" with "grid point" to save two more characters. If anyone was hoping to accomplish something more worthwhile, we could also try to use what we've discussed to try to compress widely used rulesets.

I have not heard of extensive-form rules, but they sound like they need lots of definition to be precise.

[HermanHiddema]

@HermanHiddema

"Black, White, etc." serves the purpose of specifying the first player while hinting at alternation.

Color of first player is not really relevant to the rules. If you're going for ultra-compast, why not drop it?

Isn't that grammatically incorrect to say own instead of one's own?

No more so than your original phrasing, IMO.

"grid point" is shorter than "intersection", nice - I won't replace "spots" with "points" too though, since that would negate the two characters saved. I can't describe chains with "adjacent" because diagonals could be interpreted as such.

You can use "orthogonally" if you want, but since there are a lot of points open for (mis)interpretation anyway, I don't think this one is serious.

I added resignation as a personal choice of what the ruleset should accomplish. I know one could justify that if someone quits, no ruleset can tell them otherwise. But some things show poor sportsmanship while others are accepted. One could also say that cheating without being caught is implicitly allowed. Some games revolve around cheating. This game is about exactly what is allowed. That's just my view.

Then don't call it CMNZR, give it a new name. CMMR, perhaps?

Also if you're going for compactness, stone scoring is very compact without significantly altering strategy.

[Mr. Mormon]

In actual play, it's convenient to only pick who goes first, not color as well. That, along with not doing stone scoring, are part of my ruleset, which concept itself is not part of this thread unless you want it to be. (I left out whether winning is absolute or has degrees - I don't care about that.) If you can show me that a chain definition can be shorter than a path definition, be my guest. But I contest that CMNZR (NZ because it's very similar) has illegal grammar.

1. Black, White etc. *1* quits, passes, or puts One's piece on an empty [intersection/grid point], removing Other's *2* without paths along the lines to empty spots through only Other's *3* then for One's-avoid board states of One's past turns.
2. If One passes following a pass *4* Other resumes 1 by no pass or agrees on pieces to remove before each sums One's, empty spots without paths to Other's not through One's, and 7 if *5* White if Black had no first free turns.

Is there a problem with any of the asterisked areas? The subject of the verbs after *1* is singular, omitting the object of "Other's" etc. is legal like in this sentence: "Mario's hat was stolen, and so was Luigi's.", and commas or extra conjunctions at *3* and *4* are not required for proper sentence structure. *5* is fuzzy, what do you think?

[Bantari]

So many words written in attempt to say something in a compact way.
Amazing. Absolutely amazing!
And funny...
Lol.

It reminds me of a few common sayings... like:
- A war to end all wars; or
- Lets have meetings back to back until we figure out why nothing gets done around here...
... and so on.

[Mr. Mormon]

In justification of the ironic over-discussion, the combinatorial universe of lossless MNZR compressions is exponential in scope. Funny indeed.

Just had to say it. [/off-topic]

[hyperpape]

My interpretation was willfully perverse, but you have to consider those interpretations to suss out the logical consequences of a set of rules. From your post, I thought you were into logic chopping.

I think coming up with idiomatic and easily understood rules for explaining the game is a good pursuit, but it's not the typical one in these parts.

[Mr. Mormon]

Pointing out other possible interpretations is very useful. Please don't take me the wrong way when I disagree.

[HermanHiddema]

In actual play, it's convenient to only pick who goes first, not color as well. That, along with not doing stone scoring, are part of my ruleset, which concept itself is not part of this thread unless you want it to be. (I left out whether winning is absolute or has degrees - I don't care about that.) If you can show me that a chain definition can be shorter than a path definition, be my guest. But I contest that CMNZR (NZ because it's very similar) has illegal grammar.

1. Black, White etc. *1* quits, passes, or puts One's piece on an empty [intersection/grid point], removing Other's *2* without paths along the lines to empty spots through only Other's *3* then for One's-avoid board states of One's past turns.
2. If One passes following a pass *4* Other resumes 1 by no pass or agrees on pieces to remove before each sums One's, empty spots without paths to Other's not through One's, and 7 if *5* White if Black had no first free turns.

Is there a problem with any of the asterisked areas? The subject of the verbs after *1* is singular, omitting the object of "Other's" etc. is legal like in this sentence: "Mario's hat was stolen, and so was Luigi's.", and commas or extra conjunctions at *3* and *4* are not required for proper sentence structure. *5* is fuzzy, what do you think?

"Black, White, etc. is not singular but plural.

Capitalizing "One" and "Other" is either incorrect or makes them proper nouns, in which case the rules specify that both Black and White play with the pieces of some guy named One, and do not provide any way for the stones of this guy named Other to get on the board at all.

But anyway, I will refrain from making further comments, as I don't think your approach has merit.

[Mr. Mormon]

I'm not stubborn. What's a better approach that's as short?