Life In 19x19

Your right, Simon. I have it the right way in the Onomasticon, but there I just note they are brothers. Writing here I obviously fell into the lazy, old habit of "assuming" - possibly lulled into that by a report in my mind recently that he was the youngest ever amateur Honinbo.

I wonder how much of a rivalry they have. The parents set them up for it, after all, naming one after a tiger and one after a dragon.

a doubled iron pillar is as thick as two short planks

in plain English, thick is the opposite of thin.

in Go, thin means "easily cut".

so in Go, thick means not easily cut.

simplest example i can think of is a bamboo joint.

heavy is the opposite of light. light doesn't mean thin; it means flexible, aerated, with lots of space for eyes or dodging about. heavy means clumsy, inflexible, can't move about much, as in:

"Go weighs heavily on the soul; Up, up! my friend - And quit your books; why all this toil and trouble?!" (apologies to William Wordsworth for plagiarising him).

now we can make a table:

good bad
thick thin
light heavy