One of the incredible things about chess is how well it plays, to put it simply. It plays so well, it's hard to fathom how it could ever have been invented. It almost seems to have been created by some higher power, for the education, edification, and entertainment of us mortals. There's always more to learn, no matter how much you've played. It's impossible to imagine how chess could be improved. Chess is already a perfect game.
This begs a question - given the perfection of chess, why have I tried to come up with a chess variant? I was asked this question recently, and had no immediate reply. I still have no clear one. I think that at its core, Gargantua is my homage to chess; a love letter to chess, if you will. I will never stop loving chess, and I will never stop playing chess.
Does this mean I'm giving up on Gargantua? No. I'm still interested in finding out how good a game Gargantua is, and until I find out, I'm not going anywhere :-) My current suspicion is that I've made the gargantua too powerful a piece to allow for the creation of long mating sequences. I also suspect I've made the gargantua too powerful a piece to allow for the kind of brilliancies we see in chess. Even if both of these suspicions prove to be correct, Gargantua might still be a fun, entertaining, and viable game to play. We'll see!
Puzzle of the day: below is a Gargantua helpmate-in-one puzzle; what is Black's helping move, and White's checkmate reply?
update: here's the solution
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