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Midboard: an alternate term for "opponent's outer board"

Posted By: Nack Ballard
Date: Wednesday, 30 November 2011, at 6:02 p.m.

In Response To: Midboard: an alternate term for "opponent's outer board" (Nack Ballard)

Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions and opinions, and I hope they keep on coming.

Tom's and Michael's Q# and pictorial suggestions are clever, and might well be useful abbreviations in certain contexts or systems. However, and I probably should have made this clear, I am looking for a descriptive term for mainstream backgammon use. And, more immediately, in the aim to teach Nactation, I would much rather write descriptively than add use new meanings for letters and symbols (e.g., Q-whatever).

I admit that "midboard" or "midquadrant" isn't perfect. (Even midpoint is not exactly midway between the two extreme points.) But I don't think there is a perfect one-word term. I'm interested in finding the best one available.

Bill grasped my intent, and I like his idea. To be as analogous as possible to baseball, one would probably call the home board the "infield" and the other three quadrants the "outfield" (perhaps even left field, center field and right field), but no analogy needs to be that ideal.

The problem with using infield for the outer board and outfield for the opponent's outer board, as I see it, is two-fold:

  • "Outfield" is already defined as the area between the 7pt and the 18pt (i.e., the two outer boards combined).
  • "Infield" sounds a lot like "inner board" and "inside," terms that already refer to the area between the 1pt (or 0pt) and 6pt.

If "infield" were to be adopted, I would probably want it to mean the two inner boards combined. That could actually be an additional useful term that doesn't cause us to redefine or step on the toes of existing terms.

As for the area between the 13pt and 18pt, I like Daniel's "far outer board." I think it's a term I could use immediately without meeting without objection. I would prefer a term that is shorter still, but it may not be possible to find one that is widely accepted. For the same number of letters, "far outer board" is better than "Opp outer board."

My favorite is still midboard / midquadrant (the quadrant containing the midpoint, and the quadrant situated midway between where the checkers enter and where they start to bear off, or midway between the back quadrant and the near side), but I won't use it without more support.

Among other terms I considered are:

Transboard / transquadrant (transition from the back quadrant to the outer board/quadrant)

Tweenboard / tweenquadrant (the board or quadrant between the back quadrant and the near side).

Cross board / cross quadrant (the quadrant that is across the board from the outer quadrant, or completely across the board from the home quadrant.

Pouter board / pouter quadrant (contraction of Opp outer board...)

Any other "bright" ideas?

Nack

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