21 May 2013

Chess NAGs

While I was writing last week's post, Informant No.1, Game No.1, I included an awkward explanation:-

A '?' on Black's 9th leads to a plus-over-minus on White's 10th, which is awarded a '!'. A couple of White's subsequent moves are also awarded a '!', after which Black is lost.

Certain that there must be a better way to use the 'plus-over-minus' notation, I discovered Wikipedia's page Numeric Annotation Glyphs, which equates various chess notation symbols to Unicode. Here's a table of the relevant symbols and codes.

‼ 8252 '‼' vs. '!!'
⁇ 8263 '⁇' vs. '??'
⁉ 8265 '⁉' vs. '!?'
⁈ 8264 '⁈' vs. '?!'
□ 9633 Wikipedia shows '9632' (which is ■)
∞ 8734 See also Unclear Positions (and follow ups)
⩲ 10866  
⩱ 10865  
± 177  
∓ 8723  
⨀ 10752  
⟳ 10227  
→ 8594  
↑ 8593  
∆ 8710  
⌓ 8979  
⇔ 8660  
⇗ 8663  
⟫ 10219  
⟪ 10218  
✕ 10005  
⊥ 8869  

Now here's the same awkward explanation using Unicode:-

A '?' on Black's 9th leads to a '±' on White's 10th, which is awarded a '!'. A couple of White's subsequent moves are also awarded a '!', after which Black is lost.

Looks good, but more trials necessary... Thanks, Wikipedia!

No comments: