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Games Of The Discworld
The fictional universe of the ''Discworld'' novels by Terry Pratchett features a number of invented games, some of which have gone on to spawn real-world variants. Stealth chess Stealth chess is a chess variant, played in the Ankh-Morpork Assassins' Guild, according to ''The Discworld Companion''. It is similar to normal chess, with the exception of an extra piece and the widening of the board by two specially-colored fields (red and white are described, as opposed to the normal black and white) on either side, known as the Slurks. The extra piece is the assassin (appearing on either side of the rooks in the beginning of the game), the only piece to be able to move in the Slurk. The assassin moves one square in any direction, and two to capture; however, on exiting the Slurks, the assassin may make as many moves as it has taken within the Slurks and, optionally, a capture move. An example may clarify: If an assassin enters the Slurks and takes five moves within them (in any di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fictional Universe
A fictional universe, or fictional world, is a self-consistent setting with events, and often other elements, that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed, or fictional realm (or world). Fictional universes may appear in novels, comics, films, television shows, video games, and other creative works. The subject is most commonly addressed in reference to fictional universes that differ markedly from the real world, such as those that introduce entire fictional cities, countries, or even planets, or those that contradict commonly known facts about the world and its history, or those that feature fantasy or science fiction concepts such as magic or faster than light travel—and especially those in which the deliberate development of the setting is a substantial focus of the work. When a large franchise of related works has two or more somewhat different fictional universes that are each internally consistent but not consistent with each other (su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Witches Abroad
''Witches Abroad'' is the twelfth ''Discworld'' novel by Terry Pratchett, originally published in 1991.Fantastic FictioWitches Abroad (Discworld, book 12) Terry PratchettRetrieved 2009-05-9 Plot Following the death of the witch Desiderata Hollow, Magrat Garlick receives Desiderata's magic wand, for Desiderata was not only a witch but also a fairy godmother. By giving the wand to Magrat, she effectively makes Magrat the new fairy godmother to a young woman called Emberella, who lives across the Disc in Genua. Sadly, Desiderata does not give Magrat any instruction on how to use the wand, so pretty much anything that Magrat points it at simply becomes a pumpkin. Desiderata had promised Emberella that she would not be forced to marry the Duke (or Duc, as it is spelled in the book), who's really a frog/prince. Now it is up to Magrat and her companions, (Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg), to ensure Emberella does not marry the Duc, despite the desires of another witch in Genua called ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin Suited Cards
In playing cards, a suit is one of the categories into which the cards of a deck are divided. Most often, each card bears one of several pips (symbols) showing to which suit it belongs; the suit may alternatively or additionally be indicated by the color printed on the card. The rank for each card is determined by the number of pips on it, except on face cards. Ranking indicates which cards within a suit are better, higher or more valuable than others, whereas there is no order between the suits unless defined in the rules of a specific card game. In a single deck, there is exactly one card of any given rank in any given suit. A deck may include special cards that belong to no suit, often called jokers. History Modern Western playing cards are generally divided into two or three general suit-systems. The older Latin suits are subdivided into the Italian and Spanish suit-systems. The younger Germanic suits are subdivided into the German and Swiss suit-systems. The French suits ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tarot
The tarot (, first known as '' trionfi'' and later as ''tarocchi'' or ''tarocks'') is a pack of playing cards, used from at least the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play card games such as Tarocchini. From their Italian roots, tarot playing cards spread to most of Europe evolving into a family of games that includes German Grosstarok and more recent games such as French Tarot and Austrian Königrufen which are still played today. In the late 18th century, French occultists began to make elaborate, but unsubstantiated, claims about their history and meaning, leading to the emergence of custom decks for use in divination via tarot card reading and cartomancy. Thus there are two distinct types of tarot pack: those used for playing games and those used for divination. However, some older patterns, such as the Tarot de Marseille, originally intended for playing card games, have also been used for cartomancy. Like the common playing cards, tarot has four suits whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Discworld (world)
The Discworld is the fictional setting for all of Terry Pratchett's ''Discworld'' fantasy novels. It consists of a large disc (complete with edge-of-the-world drop-off and consequent waterfall) resting on the backs of four huge elephants which are in turn standing on the back of an enormous turtle, named Great A'Tuin (similar to Chukwa or Akupara from Hindu mythology) as it slowly swims through space. The Disc has been shown to be heavily influenced by magic and, while Pratchett gave it certain similarities to planet Earth, he also created his own system of physics for it. Pratchett first explored the idea of a disc-shaped world in the novel ''Strata'' (1981). Great A'Tuin Great A'Tuin is the Giant Star Turtle (of the fictional species ''Chelys galactica'') who travels through the Discworld universe's space, carrying four giant elephants (named Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon, and Jerakeen) who in turn carry the Discworld. The narration has described A'Tuin as "the only turtle ever ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minor Arcana
The Rider–Waite_Tarot.html"_;"title="King_of_Swords_card_from_the_Rider–Waite_Tarot">King_of_Swords_card_from_the_Rider–Waite_Tarot_ The_Minor_Arcana,_sometimes_Lesser_Arcana,_are_the_Suit_(cards).html" ;"title="Rider–Waite_Tarot_.html" ;"title="Rider–Waite_Tarot.html" ;"title="King of Swords card from the Rider–Waite Tarot">King of Swords card from the Rider–Waite Tarot ">Rider–Waite_Tarot.html" ;"title="King of Swords card from the Rider–Waite Tarot">King of Swords card from the Rider–Waite Tarot The Minor Arcana, sometimes Lesser Arcana, are the Suit (cards)">suit cards in a cartomantic tarot deck. Ordinary tarot cards first appeared in northern Italy in the 1440s and were designed for tarot card games. They typically have four suits each of 10 unillustrated pip cards numbered one (ace) to ten, along with 4 court cards (face cards). Tarot games are still widely played in central and southern Europe and French Tarot is the second most popular card game in F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poker
Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game was played with just 20 cards, today it is usually played with a standard deck, although in countries where short packs are common, it may be played with 32, 40 or 48 cards.Parlett (2008), pp. 568–570. Thus poker games vary in deck configuration, the number of cards in play, the number dealt face up or face down, and the number shared by all players, but all have rules that involve one or more rounds of betting. In most modern poker games, the first round of betting begins with one or more of the players making some form of a forced bet (the '' blind'' or ''ante''). In standard poker, each player bets according to the rank they believe their hand is worth as compared to the other players. The action then proceeds clockwise as each play ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blackjack
Blackjack (formerly Black Jack and Vingt-Un) is a casino banking game. The most widely played casino banking game in the world, it uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as Twenty-One. This family of card games also includes the British game of Pontoon, the European game, Vingt-et-Un and the Russian game Ochko. Blackjack players do not compete against each other. The game is a comparing card game where each player competes against the dealer. History Blackjack's immediate precursor was the English version of '' twenty-one'' called ''Vingt-Un'', a game of unknown (but likely Spanish) provenance. The first written reference is found in a book by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes was a gambler, and the protagonists of his " Rinconete y Cortadillo", from ''Novelas Ejemplares'', are card cheats in Seville. They are proficient at cheating at ''veintiuna'' (Spanish for "twenty-one") and state that the object of the gam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Usenet
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980.''From Usenet to CoWebs: interacting with social information spaces'', Christopher Lueg, Danyel Fisher, Springer (2003), , Users read and post messages (called ''articles'' or ''posts'', and collectively termed ''news'') to one or more topic categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to the Internet forums that have become widely used. Discussions are threaded, as with web forums and BBSs, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.The jargon file v4.4.7 , Jargon File Archive. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terence Tao
Terence Chi-Shen Tao (; born 17 July 1975) is an Australian-American mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he holds the James and Carol Collins chair. His research includes topics in harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, algebraic combinatorics, arithmetic combinatorics, geometric combinatorics, probability theory, compressed sensing and analytic number theory. Tao was born to ethnic Chinese immigrant parents and raised in Adelaide. Tao won the Fields Medal in 2006 and won the Royal Medal and Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics in 2014. He is also a 2006 MacArthur Fellow. Tao has been the author or co-author of over three hundred research papers. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest living mathematicians and has been referred to as the "Mozart of mathematics". Life and career Family Tao's parents are first-generation immigrants from Hong Kong to Australia.''Wen Wei Po'', Page A4, 24 Au ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agatean Empire
The Discworld is the fictional setting for all of Terry Pratchett's ''Discworld'' fantasy novels. It consists of a large disc (complete with edge-of-the-world drop-off and consequent waterfall) resting on the backs of four huge elephants which are in turn standing on the back of an enormous turtle, named Great A'Tuin (similar to Chukwa or Akupara from Hindu mythology) as it slowly swims through space. The Disc has been shown to be heavily influenced by magic and, while Pratchett gave it certain similarities to planet Earth, he also created his own system of physics for it. Pratchett first explored the idea of a disc-shaped world in the novel '' Strata'' (1981). Great A'Tuin Great A'Tuin is the Giant Star Turtle (of the fictional species ''Chelys galactica'') who travels through the Discworld universe's space, carrying four giant elephants (named Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon, and Jerakeen) who in turn carry the Discworld. The narration has described A'Tuin as "the only turtle ev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tile Game
A tile-based game is a game that uses tiles as one of the fundamental elements of play. Traditional tile-based games use small tiles as playing pieces for gambling or entertainment games. Some board games use tiles to create their board, giving multiple possibilities for board layout, or allowing changes in the board geometry during play. Each tile has a back (undifferentiated) side and a face side. Domino tiles are usually rectangular, twice as long as they are wide and at least twice as wide as they are thick, though games exist with square tiles, triangular tiles and even hexagonal tiles. Traditional games * Anagrams * Chinese dominoes * Dominoes * Mahjong Commercial games * ''Okey'' * ''Quad-Ominos'' * ''Qwirkle'' * ''Rummikub'' * ''Scrabble'' Games using non-rectangular tiles * ''Bendomino'' * '' Blokus'' * ''Gheos'' * '' Heroscape'' * ''Hive'' * ''Tantrix'' * ''Triominos'' Board games * '' Alhambra'' * ''Azul (board game)'' * ''Betrayal at House on the Hill'' * '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
