101-402: Checkers ( American English ), also known as draughts ( / d r ɑː f t s , d r æ f t s / ; British English ), is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve forward movements of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Checkers is developed from alquerque . The term "checkers" derives from the checkered board which the game
202-698: A cot–caught merger , which is rapidly spreading throughout the whole country. However, the South, Inland North, and a Northeastern coastal corridor passing through Rhode Island, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore typically preserve an older cot–caught distinction. For that Northeastern corridor, the realization of the THOUGHT vowel is particularly marked , as depicted in humorous spellings, like in tawk and cawfee ( talk and coffee ), which intend to represent it being tense and diphthongal : [oə] . A split of TRAP into two separate phonemes , using different
303-520: A pronunciations for example in gap [æ] versus gas [eə] , further defines New York City as well as Philadelphia–Baltimore accents. Most Americans preserve all historical /r/ sounds, using what is known as a rhotic accent . The only traditional r -dropping (or non-rhoticity) in regional U.S. accents variably appears today in eastern New England , New York City , and some of the former plantation South primarily among older speakers (and, relatedly, some African-American Vernacular English across
404-471: A 12×12 board. American checkers was weakly solved in 2007 by a team of Canadian computer scientists led by Jonathan Schaeffer . From the standard starting position, perfect play by each side would result in a draw. Checkers is played by two opponents on opposite sides of the game board. One player has dark pieces (usually black); the other has light pieces (usually white or red). The darker color moves first, then players alternate turns. A player cannot move
505-616: A complex phenomenon of "both convergence and divergence": some accents are homogenizing and leveling , while others are diversifying and deviating further away from one another. Having been settled longer than the American West Coast, the East Coast has had more time to develop unique accents, and it currently comprises three or four linguistically significant regions, each of which possesses English varieties both different from each other as well as quite internally diverse: New England ,
606-447: A consonant, such as in pearl , car and fort . Non-rhotic American accents, those that do not pronounce ⟨r⟩ except before a vowel, such as some accents of Eastern New England , New York City , and African-Americans , and a specific few (often older ones) spoken by Southerners , are often quickly noticed by General American listeners and perceived as sounding especially ethnic, regional, or antiquated. Rhoticity
707-452: A long time, the queen could also move like a knight; some players disapproved of this ability to "gallop like the horse" (knight). The book A History of Chess by H.J.R. Murray, says that William Coxe , who was in Russia in 1772, saw chess played with the queen also moving like a knight. Such an augmented queen piece is now known as the fairy chess piece amazon . Around 1230, the queen
808-586: A merger with the THOUGHT ( caught ) set. Having taken place prior to the unrounding of the cot vowel, it results in lengthening and perhaps raising, merging the more recently separated vowel into the THOUGHT vowel in the following environments: before many instances of /f/ , /θ/ , and particularly /s/ (as in Austria, cloth, cost, loss, off, often, etc.), a few instances before /ŋ/ (as in strong, long, wrong ), and variably by region or speaker in gone , on , and certain other words. Unlike American accents,
909-636: A nice day , for sure); many are now distinctly old-fashioned (swell, groovy). Some English words now in general use, such as hijacking, disc jockey , boost, bulldoze and jazz , originated as American slang. American English has always shown a marked tendency to use words in different parts of speech and nouns are often used as verbs . Examples of nouns that are now also verbs are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, hashtag, head, divorce, loan, estimate, X-ray, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, bad-mouth, vacation , major, and many others. Compounds coined in
1010-475: A process of extensive dialect mixture and leveling in which English varieties across the colonies became more homogeneous compared with the varieties in Britain. English thus predominated in the colonies even by the end of the 17th century's first immigration of non-English speakers from Western Europe and Africa. Additionally, firsthand descriptions of a fairly uniform American English (particularly in contrast to
1111-437: A queened pawn as a ferzia , as opposed to the original queen or regina , to account for this. When the queen was attacked, it was customary to warn the opponent by announcing " gardez la reine " or simply " gardez ", similar to the announcement of "check". Some published rules even required this announcement before the queen could be legally captured. This custom was largely abandoned in the 19th century. In Russia, for
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#17328441863881212-657: A series of other vowel shifts in the same region, known by linguists as the " Inland North ". The Inland North shares with the Eastern New England dialect (including Boston accents ) a backer tongue positioning of the GOOSE /u/ vowel (to [u] ) and the MOUTH /aʊ/ vowel (to [ɑʊ~äʊ] ) in comparison to the rest of the country. Ranging from northern New England across the Great Lakes to Minnesota, another Northern regional marker
1313-514: A survey, completed in 2003, polling English speakers across the United States about their specific everyday word choices, hoping to identify regionalisms. The study found that most Americans prefer the term sub for a long sandwich, soda (but pop in the Great Lakes region and generic coke in the South) for a sweet and bubbly soft drink , you or you guys for the plural of you (but y'all in
1414-453: A variation of American English in these islands. In 2021, about 245 million Americans, aged 5 or above, spoke English at home: a majority of the United States total population of roughly 330 million people. The United States has never had an official language at the federal level, but English is commonly used at the federal level and in states without an official language. 32 of the 50 states, in some cases as part of what has been called
1515-417: Is almost always disadvantageous to exchange the queen for a single piece other than the enemy's queen. The reason that the queen is stronger than a combination of a rook and bishop, even though they control the same number of squares, is twofold. First, the queen is more mobile than the rook and the bishop, as the entire power of the queen can be transferred to another location in one move, while transferring
1616-642: Is also associated with the United States, perhaps mostly in the Midwest and the South. American accents that have not undergone the cot–caught merger (the lexical sets LOT and THOUGHT ) have instead retained a LOT – CLOTH split : a 17th-century distinction in which certain words (labeled as the CLOTH lexical set ) separated away from the LOT set. The split, which has now reversed in most British English, simultaneously shifts this relatively recent CLOTH set into
1717-637: Is also home to a creole language known commonly as Hawaiian Pidgin , and some Hawaii residents speak English with a Pidgin-influenced accent. American English also gave rise to some dialects outside the country, for example, Philippine English , beginning during the American occupation of the Philippines and subsequently the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands ; Thomasites first established
1818-597: Is called "ντάμα" (dama), which is also one term for the queen in chess. Similar games have been played for millennia. A board resembling a checkers board was found in Ur dating from 3000 BC. In the British Museum are specimens of ancient Egyptian checkerboards, found with their pieces in burial chambers, and the game was played by the pharaoh Hatshepsut . Plato mentioned a game, πεττεία or petteia , as being of Egyptian origin, and Homer also mentions it. The method of capture
1919-526: Is common in most American accents despite being now rare in England because, during the 17th-century British colonization, nearly all dialects of English were rhotic, and most North American English simply remained that way. The preservation of rhoticity in North America was also supported by continuing waves of rhotic-accented Scotch-Irish immigrants, most intensely during the 18th century (and moderately during
2020-578: Is less restricted and stronger in closed positions. A player should generally delay developing the queen, as developing it too quickly can expose it to attacks by enemy pieces, causing the player to lose time removing the queen from danger. Despite this, beginners often develop the queen early in the game, hoping to plunder the enemy position and deliver an early checkmate , such as the scholar's mate . Early queen attacks are rare in high-level chess, but there are some openings with early queen development that are used by high-level players. For example,
2121-411: Is no draw with one king and men versus one king. 10x10 15 10x10 15 Column draughts (Russian towers), also known as Bashni , is a kind of draughts, known in Russia since the beginning of the nineteenth century, in which the game is played according to the usual rules of Russian draughts, but with the difference that the captured man is not removed from the playing field: rather, it is placed under
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#17328441863882222-420: Is often identified by Americans as a "country" accent, and is defined by the /aɪ/ vowel losing its gliding quality : [aː] , the initiation event for a complicated Southern vowel shift, including a " Southern drawl " that makes short front vowels into distinct-sounding gliding vowels . The fronting of the vowels of GOOSE , GOAT , MOUTH , and STRUT tends to also define Southern accents as well as
2323-482: Is placed on the number of moves that are allowed in between jumps (which is a reasonable generalisation of the drawing rule in standard Checkers), then the problem is in PSPACE, thus it is PSPACE-complete. However, without this bound, Checkers is EXPTIME-complete. However, other problems have only polynomial complexity : In an ending with three kings versus one king, the player with three kings must win in thirteen moves or
2424-606: Is played in Turkey, Kuwait, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Greece, and several other locations in the Middle East, as well as in the same locations as Russian checkers. There are several variants in these countries, with the Armenian variant (called tama ) allowing also forward-diagonal movement of men and the Greek requiring the king to stop directly after the captured piece. With this rule, there
2525-623: Is played on, whereas "draughts" derives from the verb "to draw" or "to move". The most popular forms of checkers in Anglophone countries are American checkers (also called English draughts ), which is played on an 8×8 checkerboard ; Russian draughts and Turkish draughts , both on an 8x8 board; and International draughts , played on a 10×10 board – with the latter widely played in many countries worldwide. There are many other variants played on 8×8 boards. Canadian checkers and Malaysian/Singaporean checkers (also locally known as dam ) are played on
2626-402: Is possible, capturing is mandatory in most official rules. If the player does not capture, the other player can remove the opponent's piece as a penalty (or muffin), and where there are two or more such positions the player forfeits pieces that cannot be moved (although some rule variations make capturing optional). In almost all variants, a player with no valid move remaining loses. This occurs if
2727-408: Is the common language at home, in public, and in government. Queen (chess) The queen (♕, ♛) is the most powerful piece in the game of chess . It can move any number of squares vertically, horizontally or diagonally , combining the powers of the rook and bishop . Each player starts the game with one queen, placed in the middle of the first rank next to the king . Because
2828-635: Is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States ; the de facto common language used in government, education, and commerce; and an official language in 32 of the 50 U.S. states . Since the late 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide. Varieties of American English include many patterns of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and particularly spelling that are unified nationwide but distinct from other English dialects around
2929-463: Is the variable fronting of /ɑ/ before /r/ , for example, appearing four times in the stereotypical Boston shibboleth Park the car in Harvard Yard . Several other phenomena serve to distinguish regional U.S. accents. Boston , Pittsburgh , Upper Midwestern , and Western U.S. accents have fully completed a merger of the LOT vowel with the THOUGHT vowel ( /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ , respectively):
3030-402: Is usually less significant than the points favoring the queen. The queen is strongest when the board is open, the enemy king is poorly defended, or there are loose (i.e. undefended) pieces in the enemy camp. Because of its long range and ability to move in multiple directions, the queen is well-equipped to execute forks . Compared to other long range pieces (i.e. rooks and bishops), the queen
3131-476: The English-only movement , have adopted legislation granting official or co-official status to English. Typically only "English" is specified, not a particular variety like American English. (From 1923 to 1969, the state of Illinois recognized its official language as "American", meaning American English.) Puerto Rico is the largest example of a United States territory in which another language – Spanish –
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3232-608: The Mid-Atlantic states (including a New York accent as well as a unique Philadelphia–Baltimore accent ), and the South . As of the 20th century, the middle and eastern Great Lakes area , Chicago being the largest city with these speakers, also ushered in certain unique features, including the fronting of the LOT /ɑ/ vowel in the mouth toward [a] and tensing of the TRAP /æ/ vowel wholesale to [eə] . These sound changes have triggered
3333-544: The Native American languages . Examples of such names are opossum , raccoon , squash , moose (from Algonquian ), wigwam , and moccasin . American English speakers have integrated traditionally non-English terms and expressions into the mainstream cultural lexicon; for instance, en masse , from French ; cookie , from Dutch ; kindergarten from German , and rodeo from Spanish . Landscape features are often loanwords from French or Spanish, and
3434-571: The Scandinavian Defense (1.e4 d5), which often features queen moves by Black on the second and third moves, is considered sound and has been played at the world championship level. Some less common examples have also been observed in high-level games. The Danvers Opening (1.e4 e5 2.Qh5), which is widely characterized as a beginner's opening, has occasionally been played by the American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura . A queen exchange often marks
3535-420: The chessboard oriented correctly, the white queen starts on a white square and the black queen starts on a black square—thus the mnemonics "queen gets her color", "queen on [her] [own] color", or "the dress [queen piece] matches the shoes [square]" (Latin: servat rēgīna colōrem ). The queen can be moved any number of unoccupied squares in a straight line vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, thus combining
3636-714: The francophile tastes of the 19th century Victorian era Britain (for example they preferred programme for program , manoeuvre for maneuver , cheque for check , etc.). AmE almost always uses -ize in words like realize . BrE prefers -ise , but also uses -ize on occasion (see: Oxford spelling ). There are a few differences in punctuation rules. British English is more tolerant of run-on sentences , called " comma splices " in American English, and American English prefers that periods and commas be placed inside closing quotation marks even in cases in which British rules would place them outside. American English also favors
3737-558: The 13th-century book Libro de los juegos . The rule of crowning was used by the 13th century, as it is mentioned in the Philippe Mouskés 's Chronique in 1243 when the game was known as Fierges , the name used for the chess queen (derived from the Persian ferz , meaning royal counsellor or vizier). The pieces became known as "dames" when that name was also adopted for the chess queen. The rule forcing players to take whenever possible
3838-759: The 18th century; apartment , shanty in the 19th century; project, condominium , townhouse , mobile home in the 20th century; and parts thereof ( driveway , breezeway, backyard ) . Industry and material innovations from the 19th century onwards provide distinctive new words, phrases, and idioms through railroading (see further at rail terminology ) and transportation terminology, ranging from types of roads ( dirt roads , freeways ) to infrastructure ( parking lot , overpass , rest area ), to automotive terminology often now standard in English internationally. Already existing English words—such as store , shop , lumber —underwent shifts in meaning; others remained in
3939-534: The 20th century. The use of English in the United States is a result of British colonization of the Americas . The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America during the early 17th century, followed by further migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 17th and 18th centuries, dialects from many different regions of England and the British Isles existed in every American colony, allowing
4040-526: The Art of Chess with 150 Problems ) by Luis Ramírez de Lucena , was published during the reign of Isabella I of Castile . Even before that, the Valencian poem Scachs d'amor ("Chess of Love") depicted a chess game between Francesc de Castellví and Narcís de Vinyoles and commented on by Bernat Fenollar , which clearly had the modern moves of the queen and the bishop . Well before the queen's powers expanded, it
4141-622: The British form is a back-formation , such as AmE burglarize and BrE burgle (from burglar ). However, while individuals usually use one or the other, both forms will be widely understood and mostly used alongside each other within the two systems. While written American English is largely standardized across the country and spoken American English dialects are highly mutually intelligible, there are still several recognizable regional and ethnic accents and lexical distinctions. The regional sounds of present-day American English are reportedly engaged in
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4242-413: The East Coast (perhaps in imitation of 19th-century London speech), even the East Coast has gradually begun to restore rhoticity, due to it becoming nationally prestigious in the 20th century. The pronunciation of ⟨r⟩ is a postalveolar approximant [ ɹ̠ ] or retroflex approximant [ ɻ ] , but a unique "bunched tongue" variant of the approximant r sound
4343-565: The Inland North. Rather than one particular accent, General American is best defined as an umbrella covering an American accent that does not incorporate features associated with some particular region, ethnicity, or socioeconomic group. Typical General American features include rhoticity , the father–bother merger , Mary–marry–merry merger , pre-nasal "short a " tensing , and other particular vowel sounds . General American features are embraced most by Americans who are highly educated or in
4444-560: The South), sneakers for athletic shoes (but often tennis shoes outside the Northeast), and shopping cart for a cart used for carrying supermarket goods. American English and British English (BrE) often differ at the levels of phonology, phonetics, vocabulary, and, to a much lesser extent, grammar and orthography. The first large American dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language , known as Webster's Dictionary ,
4545-528: The U.S. Several verbs ending in -ize are of U.S. origin; for example, fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, weatherize , etc.; and so are some back-formations (locate, fine-tune, curate, donate, emote, upholster and enthuse). Among syntactic constructions that arose are outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of, etc. Americanisms formed by alteration of some existing words include notably pesky, phony, rambunctious, buddy, sundae , skeeter, sashay and kitty-corner. Adjectives that arose in
4646-563: The U.S. are for instance foothill , landslide (in all senses), backdrop , teenager , brainstorm , bandwagon , hitchhike , smalltime, and a huge number of others. Other compound words have been founded based on industrialization and the wave of the automobile: five-passenger car, four-door sedan, two-door sedan, and station-wagon (called an estate car in British English). Some are euphemistic ( human resources , affirmative action , correctional facility ). Many compound nouns have
4747-662: The U.S. are, for example, lengthy, bossy, cute and cutesy, punk (in all senses), sticky (of the weather), through (as in "finished"), and many colloquial forms such as peppy or wacky . A number of words and meanings that originated in Middle English or Early Modern English and that have been in everyday use in the United States have since disappeared in most varieties of British English; some of these have cognates in Lowland Scots . Terms such as fall ("autumn"), faucet ("tap"), diaper ("nappy"; itself unused in
4848-530: The U.S. while changing in Britain. Science, urbanization, and democracy have been important factors in bringing about changes in the written and spoken language of the United States. From the world of business and finance came new terms ( merger , downsize , bottom line ), from sports and gambling terminology came, specific jargon aside, common everyday American idioms, including many idioms related to baseball . The names of some American inventions remained largely confined to North America ( elevator [except in
4949-427: The U.S.), candy ("sweets"), skillet , eyeglasses , and obligate are often regarded as Americanisms. Fall for example came to denote the season in 16th century England, a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year." Gotten ( past participle of get ) is often considered to be largely an Americanism. Other words and meanings were brought back to Britain from
5050-541: The U.S., especially in the second half of the 20th century; these include hire ("to employ"), I guess (famously criticized by H. W. Fowler ), baggage , hit (a place), and the adverbs overly and presently ("currently"). Some of these, for example, monkey wrench and wastebasket , originated in 19th century Britain. The adjectives mad meaning "angry", smart meaning "intelligent", and sick meaning "ill" are also more frequent in American (and Irish) English than British English. Linguist Bert Vaux created
5151-531: The United States and the United Kingdom suggest that, while spoken American English deviated away from period British English in many ways, it is conservative in a few other ways, preserving certain features 21st-century British English has since lost. Full rhoticity (or "R-fulness") is typical of American accents, pronouncing the phoneme /r/ (corresponding to the letter ⟨r⟩ ) in all environments, including in syllable-final position or before
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#17328441863885252-503: The Virgin Mary and instead opted for secular terms such as Königin in German and "queen" in English. In Russian, the piece keeps its Persian name of ferz ; koroleva (queen) is colloquial and is never used by professional chess players. However, the names korolevna (king's daughter), tsaritsa ( tsar 's wife), and baba (old woman) are attested as early as 1694. In Arabic countries,
5353-596: The West and Midwest, and New York Latino English , spoken in the New York metropolitan area . Additionally, ethnic varieties such as Yeshiva English and " Yinglish " are spoken by some American Orthodox Jews , Cajun Vernacular English by some Cajuns in southern Louisiana , and Pennsylvania Dutch English by some Pennsylvania Dutch people. American Indian Englishes have been documented among diverse Indian tribes. The island state of Hawaii , though primarily English-speaking,
5454-430: The ability to move any amount of squares at a time (in international checkers), move backwards and, in variants where men cannot already do so, capture backwards. Like a man, a king can make successive jumps in a single turn, provided that each jump captures an enemy piece. In international draughts, kings (also called flying kings ) move any distance. They may capture an opposing man any distance away by jumping to any of
5555-547: The accents spoken in the " Midland ": a vast band of the country that constitutes an intermediate dialect region between the traditional North and South. Western U.S. accents mostly fall under the General American spectrum. Below, ten major American English accents are defined by their particular combinations of certain vowel sounds: In 2010, William Labov noted that Great Lakes, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and West Coast accents have undergone "vigorous new sound changes" since
5656-462: The advent of the printing press and the popularity of new books on chess. The new rules faced a backlash in some quarters, ranging from anxiety over a powerful female warrior figure to frank abuse against women in general. At various times, the ability of pawns to be queened was restricted while the original queen was still on the board, so as not to cause scandal by providing the king with more than one queen. An early 12th-century Latin poem refers to
5757-505: The aeronautical sense ], gasoline ) as did certain automotive terms ( truck , trunk ). New foreign loanwords came with 19th and early 20th century European immigration to the U.S.; notably, from Yiddish ( chutzpah , schmooze, bupkis, glitch ) and German ( hamburger , wiener ). A large number of English colloquialisms from various periods are American in origin; some have lost their American flavor (from OK and cool to nerd and 24/7 ), while others have not ( have
5858-406: The beginning of the endgame , but there are queen endgames , and sometimes queens are exchanged in the opening, long before the endgame. A common goal in the endgame is to promote a pawn to a queen. As the queen has the largest range and mobility, queen and king vs. lone king is an easy win when compared to some other basic mates . Queen and king vs. rook and king is also a win for the player with
5959-560: The capturing piece (man or tower). The resulting towers move around the board as a whole, "obeying" the upper piece. When taking a tower, only the uppermost piece is removed from it: and the resulting tower belongs to one player or the other according to the color of its new uppermost piece. Bashni has inspired the games Lasca and Emergo . Draughts associations and federations History, articles, variants, rules Online play American English American English , sometimes called United States English or U.S. English ,
6060-484: The cells of a square grid was not already known to the Moors who brought it, which it probably was, either via playing on a chessboard (in about 1100, probably in the south of France, this was done once again using backgammon pieces, thereby each piece was called a "fers", the same name as the chess queen , as the move of the two pieces was the same at the time) or adapting Seega using jumping capture. The rules are given in
6161-406: The country), though the vowel-consonant cluster found in "bird", "work", "hurt", "learn", etc. usually retains its r pronunciation, even in these non-rhotic American accents. Non-rhoticity among such speakers is presumed to have arisen from their upper classes' close historical contact with England, imitating London's r -dropping, a feature that has continued to gain prestige throughout England from
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#17328441863886262-614: The diverse regional dialects of British English) became common after the mid-18th century, while at the same time speakers' identification with this new variety increased. Since the 18th century, American English has developed into some new varieties, including regional dialects that retain minor influences from waves of immigrant speakers of diverse languages, primarily European languages. Some racial and regional variation in American English reflects these groups' geographic settlement, their de jure or de facto segregation, and patterns in their resettlement. This can be seen, for example, in
6363-742: The double quotation mark ("like this") over the single ('as here'). Vocabulary differences vary by region. For example, autumn is used more commonly in the United Kingdom, whereas fall is more common in American English. Some other differences include: aerial (United Kingdom) vs. antenna, biscuit (United Kingdom) vs. cookie/cracker, car park (United Kingdom) vs. parking lot, caravan (United Kingdom) vs. trailer, city centre (United Kingdom) vs. downtown, flat (United Kingdom) vs. apartment, fringe (United Kingdom) vs. bangs, and holiday (United Kingdom) vs. vacation. AmE sometimes favors words that are morphologically more complex, whereas BrE uses clipped forms, such as AmE transportation and BrE transport or where
6464-449: The entire firepower of a rook and bishop requires two moves, the bishop always being restricted to squares of one color. Second, unlike the bishop, the queen is not hampered by an inability to control squares of the opposite color to the square on which it stands. A factor in favor of the rook and bishop together is that they can attack (or defend) a square twice, while a queen can only do so once. However, experience has shown that this factor
6565-473: The first computer checkers and arguably the first video game ever according to certain definitions. In the 1950s, Arthur Samuel created one of the first board game-playing programs of any kind. More recently, in 2007 scientists at the University of Alberta developed their " Chinook " program to the point where it is unbeatable. A brute force approach that took hundreds of computers working nearly two decades
6666-510: The following two centuries) when this ethnic group eventually made up one-seventh of the colonial population. Scotch-Irish settlers spread from Delaware and Pennsylvania throughout the larger Mid-Atlantic region, the inland regions of both the South and North, and throughout the West: American dialect areas that were all uninfluenced by upper-class non-rhoticity and that consequently have remained consistently rhotic. While non-rhoticity spread on
6767-437: The game from English speakers), checkers is called dame , dames , damas , or a similar term that refers to ladies. The pieces are usually called men , stones , "peón" (pawn) or a similar term; men promoted to kings are called dames or ladies. In these languages, the queen in chess or in card games is usually called by the same term as the kings in checkers. A case in point includes the Greek terminology, in which checkers
6868-455: The game is a draw. In an ending with three kings versus one king, the player with three kings must win in thirteen moves or the game is a draw. There is also a 10×8 board variant (with two additional columns labelled i and k ) and the give-away variant Poddavki . There are official championships for shashki and its variants. 10x10 15 With this rule, there is no draw with two kings versus one. Slovak draughts 10x10? 15? 8 It
6969-426: The game. American checkers (English draughts) has been the arena for several notable advances in game artificial intelligence . In 1951 Christopher Strachey wrote the first video game program on checkers. The checkers program tried to run for the first time on 30 July 1951 at NPL, but was unsuccessful due to program errors. In the summer of 1952 he successfully ran the program on Ferranti Mark 1 computer and played
7070-939: The hospital , BrE to hospital ; contrast, however, AmE actress Elizabeth Taylor , BrE the actress Elizabeth Taylor ). Often, these differences are a matter of relative preferences rather than absolute rules; and most are not stable since the two varieties are constantly influencing each other, and American English is not a standardized set of dialects. Differences in orthography are also minor. The main differences are that American English usually uses spellings such as flavor for British flavour , fiber for fibre , defense for defence , analyze for analyse , license for licence , catalog for catalogue and traveling for travelling . Noah Webster popularized such spellings in America, but he did not invent most of them. Rather, "he chose already existing options on such grounds as simplicity, analogy or etymology." Other differences are due to
7171-656: The influence of 18th-century Protestant Ulster Scots immigrants (known in the U.S. as the Scotch-Irish ) in Appalachia developing Appalachian English and the 20th-century Great Migration bringing African-American Vernacular English to the Great Lakes urban centers. Any phonologically unmarked North American accent falls under an umbrella known as General American. This section mostly refers to such General American features. Studies on historical usage of English in both
7272-438: The late 18th century onwards, but which has conversely lost prestige in the U.S. since at least the early 20th century. Non-rhoticity makes a word like car sound like cah or source like sauce . New York City and Southern accents are the most prominent regional accents of the country, as well as the most stigmatized and socially disfavored. Southern speech, strongest in southern Appalachia and certain areas of Texas,
7373-427: The mid-nineteenth century onwards, so they "are now more different from each other than they were 50 or 100 years ago", while other accents, like of New York City and Boston, have remained stable in that same time-frame. However, a General American sound system also has some debated degree of influence nationwide, for example, gradually beginning to oust the regional accent in urban areas of the South and at least some in
7474-601: The most complex game ever solved . In November 1983, the Science Museum Oklahoma (then called the Omniplex) unveiled a new exhibit: Lefty the Checker Playing Robot. Programmed by Scott M Savage, Lefty used an Armdroid robotic arm by Colne Robotics and was powered by a 6502 processor with a combination of Basic and Assembly code to interactively play a round of checkers with visitors to the museum. Originally,
7575-617: The most formal contexts, and regional accents with the most General American native features include North Midland, Western New England, and Western accents. Although no longer region-specific, African-American Vernacular English , which remains the native variety of most working- and middle-class African Americans , has a close relationship to Southern dialects and has greatly influenced everyday speech of many Americans, including hip hop culture . Hispanic and Latino Americans have also developed native-speaker varieties of English. The best-studied Latino Englishes are Chicano English , spoken in
7676-402: The moves of the rook and bishop . The queen captures by moving to the square on which an enemy piece stands. Although both players start with one queen each, a pawn can be promoted to any of several types of pieces, including a queen, when the pawn is moved to the player's furthest rank (the opponent's first rank). Such a queen created by promotion can be an additional queen or, if
7777-428: The necessity for two pieces to cooperate to capture one, although, like Ghanaian draughts, the game could still be declared lost by a player with only one piece left. An Arabic game called Quirkat or al-qirq , with similar play to modern checkers, was played on a 5×5 board. It is mentioned in the tenth-century work Kitab al-Aghani . Al qirq was also the name for the game that is now called nine men's morris . Al qirq
7878-419: The opponent's pieces. A move consists of moving a piece forward to an adjacent unoccupied square. If the adjacent square contains an opponent's piece, and the square immediately beyond it is vacant, the piece may be captured (and removed from the game) by jumping over it. Only the dark squares of the checkerboard are used. A piece can only move forward into an unoccupied square. When capturing an opponent's piece
7979-402: The past forms of a few verbs (for example, AmE/BrE: learned / learnt , burned / burnt , snuck/sneaked , dove/dived ) although the purportedly "British" forms can occasionally be seen in American English writing as well; different prepositions and adverbs in certain contexts (for example, AmE in school, BrE at school ); and whether or not a definite article is used, in very few cases (AmE to
8080-864: The piece as a queen. The word fers became grammatically feminized in several languages, such as alferza in Spanish and fierce or fierge in French. The Carmina Burana also refer to the queen as femina (woman) and coniunx (spouse), and the name Amazon has sometimes been seen. During the great chess reform at the end of the 15th century, Catholic nations kept using an equivalent of Latin domina ("lady"), such as dama in Spanish, donna in Italy, and dame in France, all of which evoke " Our Lady ". However, Protestant nations such as Germany and England refused any derivatives of domina as it might have suggested some cult of
8181-402: The player has no pieces left, or if all the player's pieces are obstructed from moving by opponent pieces. An uncrowned piece ( man ) moves one step ahead and captures an adjacent opponent's piece by jumping over it and landing on the next square. Multiple enemy pieces can be captured in a single turn provided this is done by successive jumps made by a single piece; the jumps do not need to be in
8282-402: The player's queen has been captured, a replacement queen. The queen is by far the most common piece type a pawn is promoted to due to the relative power of a queen; promotion to a queen is colloquially called queening . The queen is typically worth about nine pawns , which is slightly stronger than a rook and a bishop together, but slightly weaker than two rooks, though there are exceptions. It
8383-553: The power ascribed to women in the troubadour tradition of courtly love ; and the medieval popularity of chess as a game particularly suitable for women to play on equal terms with men. She points to medieval poetry depicting the Virgin as the chess-queen of God or Fierce Dieu . Significantly, the earliest surviving treatise to describe the modern movement of the queen (as well as the bishop and pawn), Repetición de amores e arte de axedres con CL iuegos de partido ( Discourses on Love and
8484-400: The program was deliberately simple so that the average museum visitor could potentially win, but over time was improved. The improvements however proved to be more frustrating for the visitors, so the original code was reimplemented. Generalized Checkers is played on an M × N board. It is PSPACE-hard to determine whether a specified player has a winning strategy. And if a polynomial bound
8585-468: The queen is the strongest piece, a pawn is promoted to a queen in the vast majority of cases. The predecessor to the queen is the ferz , a weak piece only able to move or capture one step diagonally, originating from the Persian game of shatranj . The modern queen gained its power and its modern move in Spain in the 15th century. The white queen starts on d1, while the black queen starts on d8. With
8686-470: The queen remains termed and, in some cases, depicted as a vizier . Historian Marilyn Yalom proposes several factors that might have been partly responsible for influencing the piece towards its identity as a queen and its power in modern chess: the prominence of medieval queens such as Eleanor of Aquitaine , Blanche of Castile , and more particularly Isabella I of Castile ; the cult of the Virgin Mary ;
8787-508: The queen, but it is not easy. A queen sacrifice is the deliberate sacrifice of a queen in order to gain a more favorable tactical position. One of the most widely known examples of this was in the game Anderssen–Kieseritzky, 1851 , where Anderssen sacrificed a queen (along with three other pieces) to reach checkmate . The queen was originally the counsellor or prime minister or vizier ( Sanskrit mantri , Persian farzīn , Arabic firzān , firz or wazīr ). Initially, its only move
8888-437: The same line and may "zigzag" (change diagonal direction). In American checkers, men can jump only forwards; in international draughts and Russian draughts , men can jump both forwards and backwards. When a man reaches the farthest row forward, known as the kings row or crown head , it becomes a king . It is marked by placing an additional piece on top of, or crowning , the first man. The king has additional powers, namely
8989-570: The traditional standard accent of (southern) England, Received Pronunciation (RP), has evolved a trap–bath split . Moreover, American accents preserve /h/ at the start of syllables, while perhaps a majority of the regional dialects of England participate in /h/ dropping , particularly in informal contexts. However, General American is also innovative in a number of its own ways: The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as English-speaking British-American colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from
9090-456: The unoccupied squares immediately beyond it. Because jumped pieces remain on the board until the turn is complete, it is possible to reach a position in a multi-jump move where the flying king is blocked from capturing further by a piece already jumped. Flying kings are not used in American checkers; a king's only advantage over a man is the additional ability to move and capture backwards. In most non-English languages (except those that acquired
9191-417: The verb-and-preposition combination: stopover, lineup, tryout, spin-off, shootout , holdup, hideout, comeback, makeover , and many more. Some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin ( win out, hold up, back up/off/down/out, face up to and many others). Noun endings such as -ee (retiree), -ery (bakery), -ster (gangster) and -cian (beautician) are also particularly productive in
9292-772: The word corn , used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the maize plant, the most important crop in the U.S. Most Mexican Spanish contributions came after the War of 1812 , with the opening of the West, like ranch (now a common house style ). Due to Mexican culinary influence, many Spanish words are incorporated in general use when talking about certain popular dishes: cilantro (instead of coriander), queso, tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas, tostadas, fajitas, burritos, and guacamole. These words usually lack an English equivalent and are found in popular restaurants. New forms of dwelling created new terms ( lot , waterfront) and types of homes like log cabin , adobe in
9393-609: The world. Any American or Canadian accent perceived as lacking noticeably local, ethnic, or cultural markers is known in linguistics as General American ; it covers a fairly uniform accent continuum native to certain regions of the U.S. but especially associated with broadcast mass media and highly educated speech. However, historical and present linguistic evidence does not support the notion of there being one single mainstream American accent . The sound of American English continues to evolve, with some local accents disappearing, but several larger regional accents having emerged in
9494-601: Was already being romantically described as essential to the king's survival, so that when the queen was lost, there was nothing more of value on the board. Marilyn Yalom wrote that: During the 15th century, the queen's move took its modern form as a combination of the move of the rook and the current move of the bishop. Starting from Spain, this new version – called "queen's chess" (in Italian, scacchi della donna ) or, pejoratively, "madwoman's chess" ( scacchi alla rabiosa ) – spread throughout Europe rapidly, partly due to
9595-547: Was also independently invented as a piece in Japan, where it formed part of the game of dai shogi . The piece was retained in the smaller and more popular chu shogi , but does not form a part of modern shogi . In most languages the piece is known as "queen" or "lady" (e.g. Italian regina or Spanish dama ). Asian and Eastern European languages tend to refer to it as vizier , minister or advisor (e.g. Arabic/Persian وزیر wazir (vazir), Russian/Persian ферзь/فرز ferz ). In Polish it
9696-670: Was brought to Spain by the Moors , where it became known as Alquerque , the Spanish derivation of the Arabic name. It was maybe adapted into a derivation of latrunculi , or the game of the Little Soldiers, with a leaping capture, which, like modern Argentine, German, Greek and Thai draughts, had flying kings which had to stop on the next square after the captured piece, but pieces could only make up to three captures at once, or seven if all directions were legal. That said, even if playing al qirq inside
9797-402: Was introduced in France in around 1535, at which point the game became known as Jeu forcé , identical to modern American checkers. The game without forced capture became known as Le jeu plaisant de dames , the precursor of international checkers. The 18th-century English author Samuel Johnson wrote a foreword to a 1756 book about checkers by William Payne , the earliest book in English about
9898-639: Was one square diagonally. Around 1300, its abilities were enhanced to allow it to jump two squares diagonally (onto a same-colored square) for its first move. The fers changed into the queen over time. The first surviving mention of this piece as a queen or similar is the Latin regina in the Einsiedeln Poem , a 98-line Medieval Latin poem written around 997 and preserved in a monastery at Einsiedeln in Switzerland. Some surviving early medieval pieces depict
9999-501: Was placing two pieces on either side of the opponent's piece. It was said to have been played during the Trojan War . The Romans played a derivation of petteia called latrunculi , or the game of the Little Soldiers. The pieces, and sporadically the game itself, were called calculi ( pebbles ). Like the pawn in Chess , Alquerque was probably derived from πεττεία and latrunculi by removing
10100-457: Was used to solve the game, showing that a game of checkers will always end in a draw if neither player makes a mistake. The solution is for the checkers variation called go-as-you-please (GAYP) checkers and not for the variation called three-move restriction checkers, however it is a legal three-move restriction game because only openings believed to lose are barred under the three-move restriction. As of December 2007, this makes American checkers
10201-469: Was written by Noah Webster in 1828, codifying several of these spellings. Differences in grammar are relatively minor, and do not normally affect mutual intelligibility; these include: typically a lack of differentiation between adjectives and adverbs, employing the equivalent adjectives as adverbs he ran quick / he ran quickly ; different use of some auxiliary verbs ; formal (rather than notional) agreement with collective nouns ; different preferences for
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