Using hone Squares in SPGs by Roberto Osorio & Andrey Frolkin
Homebase is a well known term in proof games. It applies to diagrams that conceal the game in a picture looking perfectly quiet after a storm.
The Homebase concept is a static one, since it refers solely to the diagram, i.e., to a “physiognomic presentation” wherein one can only be certain of the location of pieces of a given type. Many proof games use this partial and deceptive certainty to offer technical and/or artistic challenges to would-be solutionists, showing very similar and even identical diagrams that result from completely different dynamics of the preceding game.
The initial locations of white and black forces plus the promotion squares (the chrysalis) make up a proper space for installing impostors that can be used to display a variety of different effects in proof games. This article presents a classification of the impostors, so as to establish a proper basis for identifying the content of homebase-type PGs featuring any of the associated themes; it also introduces new related concepts: homecircuit and meta-homebase.
We believe that this approach will considerably enhance the theoretical aspects involved and open a wider scope for tasks and artistic problems.
We use the Originals section as an annex to present some thematic originals.
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