Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 October 24

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October 24

The Great Pyramid of Giza: 8 sides, or 4?

I find a lot of sites, claiming that the pyramid have 8 sides (observable at equinoxes only), even from "authorized" sources. But I also find sites, still fiercely claiming it has 4 sides. Like, for example, put question "how many sides does the great pyramid have" in Google and Google will answer "eight".

Now, if it have 8 sides: it would be the only pyramid having that, so it should be mentioned in the Wikipedia page, right? That would be a very significant fact (if it is true).

I want to settle this conundrum once and for all and reveal the truth, please help me to do so!

Thank you, Per C — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.112.20.22 (talk) 00:01, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

This explanation on ResearchGate includes an illustration (each of the 4 apparent sides has a slight angle down the middle). 2603:6081:1C00:1187:C1F6:2046:A287:CD75 (talk) 00:22, 24 October 2021 (UTC) . . . (Or, it has exactly two sides: inside & outside)

• People always forget the side that is resting on the ground (the bottom)… so it’s either 5 or 9. Blueboar (talk) 00:30, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

A true pyramid has 4 faces plus the base, so 5. According to the link provided by the IP, it's not a true pyramid, and actually has 8 faces plus the base, so 9. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:57, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the sides of the Great Pyramid of Giza are slightly concave, as this image shows. Our article says under Exterior - Casing:

Petrie noted in 1880 that the sides of the pyramid, as we see them today, are "very distinctly hollowed" and that "each side has a sort of groove specially down the middle of the face", which he reasoned was a result of increased casing thickness in these areas.[118] A laser scanning survey in 2005 confirmed the existence of the anomalies, which can be, to some degree, attributed to damaged and removed stones.[119] Under certain lighting conditions and with image enhancement the faces can appear to be split, leading to speculation that the pyramid had been intentionally constructed eight-sided.

The outside was originally "cased entirely in white limestone", so what we see today are only the backing stones and don't necessarily follow the shape of the original exterior. Alansplodge (talk) 08:47, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes. Is there any way to demonstrate that the casing stones resulted in a true pyramid? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:55, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Question then regarding the mentioning on existing Wiki page about possible 8-sided shape, is it then considered to be 8-sided, having this 8-sided shape today, or is it 4-sided? I mean, it can't be both, and either it is a True pyramid shape, or it is not. Given the referenced research (Flinders Petrie and the Researchgate paper by Professor Khaled M. Dewidar), there is a strong argument for 8 sides, and not 4. What would be the counter-argument? There is photographic evidence and there is evidence from laser scan. If this effect of 8 sides was intentional (or not) by the pyramid builders, does it have any consequence, if it in fact have 8 sides today? Thanks, Per C — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.112.112.13 (talk) 11:17, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

No, the evidence is that it has 4 sides, which, unsurprisingly after millennia of stone-robbing and erosion, are not precisely flat. DuncanHill (talk) 16:09, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. There's an element of the coastline paradox to this. If people really want to get picky about the number of sides, surely it should include every facet of every surface block, which would bring the number into the hundreds or thousands, if not millions. Matt Deres (talk) 18:23, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

The structures at Giza and elsewhere are four sided pyramids; not pyramid (geometry)s. More specifically, the Great Pyramid is a pyramid with four slightly concave sides. 2A01:E34:EF5E:4640:963:C77E:2415:E517 (talk) 16:53, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

is donald trump the most consequential single-term president in u.s. history?

neither debates nor predictions are appropriate here
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
among single-term u.s. presidents, is trump the most consequential? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.149.131.46 (talk) 02:42, 24 October 2021 (UTC) This calls for debate and should be closed or removed. MarnetteD|Talk 02:45, 24 October 2021 (UTC) Abraham Lincoln would disagree. Trump's only the most controversial, by a light year. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:03, 24 October 2021 (UTC) James Buchanan maybe. -- Calidum 05:10, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Describing a Knight move

The book "Chess for Children Step by Step" describes a Knight move as one square along a rank or file and then one square along a diagonal.

The game "The Chessmaster 4000" describes a Knight move as 2 squares along a rank or file and then one square at a right angle.

An Internet site I remember from long ago describes a Knight move as the closest squares a Queen cannot move to.

Why are sources inconsistent on how a Knight move is described?? Do the different descriptions have pros or cons?? Georgia guy (talk) 19:44, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

They give different but equivalent descriptions. So they are not at odds with each other – which the adjective inconsistent might suggest. If you ask three people to define the rules of any game, assuming they know these rules well and can explain things well, they are bound to come up with different descriptions unless they copy them from somewhere. So, I think, the fact that they are different needs no explanation, Our article Chess has this definition: "A knight moves to any of the closest squares that are not on the same rank, file, or diagonal." That is the longest of all. It is clearly equivalent to the shortest one, that involving the queen, provided that ... one is already familiar with how a queen can move. So in explaining the moves of the various pieces to an absolute neophyte, it imposes an order on how these pieces are introduced. It may also be conceptually more challenging to understand what one piece can do in terms of what another piece cannot do. In general, though, the choice between alternative but equivalent descriptions seems to boil down to a matter of taste.  --Lambiam 22:34, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

That last definition is essentially the same one as in the FIDE's official Laws of Chess.

The first two definitions may be viewed as easier for novices to understand than the other two—certainly the book I learned from described the move as L-shaped, i.e. the second definition—but they suggest that the knight passes through one or two other squares on the way to its destination, so additional words are required to make it clear that it actually goes directly to the destination. Pedagogically speaking, it's a trade-off. --184.144.99.72 (talk) 23:00, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

The problem with the first definition (one along a rank or file and then one along a diagonal) is that if you take it literally, it lets you move to a square adjacent to the starting square (a one-square rook move). For example, your first move might be from e3 to e4, then your diagonal move is from e4 to d3, making the full move from e3 to d3. But that's not a knight move.

With care, the formulation can be made correct, but it does take extra words. --Trovatore (talk) 00:06, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Trovatore, that is incorrect. That is 2 squares along a rank or file and one along a diagonal. Georgia guy (talk) 00:08, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I got in and fixed it before I saw your comment -- you were too fast for me. The problem is essentially the same though. --Trovatore (talk) 00:09, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

I'd say the second of these descriptions would be the best advice for a newbie. The reason for inconsistncy is that chess is very ancient and evolved with time; it's not like someone came up with it in their back room one Wednesday. So while FIDE does govern international chess, it doesn't govern chess sets you might buy in a shop or books or amateur play, all of which may come up with their own descriptions of things. --Dweller (talk) Old fashioned is the new thing! 11:21, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Ain’t it funny how the knight moves! (Ohhh I remember) Blueboar (talk) 12:08, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Humming a song from 1962 I see. --Jayron32 17:10, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

For your amusement, here is a description from an 18th-century treatise on chess:

The move of the knight is peculiar to himself, and difficult to explain. It is two squares at once (three, including his own) in a direction partly diagonal and partly strait. The house he goes into, is always of a different colour from that which he leaves. It may likewise be said to be uniformly next but one to the latter, although in his passage to it he passes obliquely over the corners of two.^[1]

 --Lambiam 22:36, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

In The Queen's Gambit (TV show; I don't have the book with me) I think I remember young Beth described it as something like "one up or across then one diagonal". I remember thinking I'd never heard of any description or thought of it as anything other than an "L" shape.Hayttom (talk) 17:33, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Something to bear in mind is that, in moving from the starting to the destination square, the knight does not move through any of the squares in between, or along a particular route, or else it would be blocked by any other pieces on the intervening squares; it "jumps" from start to destination (as Lambian's quote says in archaic language). The various "path" descriptions are merely aids to visualization, not proscriptions. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.65.29 (talk) 17:41, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

May we have a proscription on that spelling, though? --184.144.99.72 (talk) 03:01, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

What spelling? You'd prefer "Nite"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:39, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Proscription ←→ Prescription. --Wrongfilter (talk) 05:45, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

My bad. I was answering hurridly shortly before leaving for a prior engagement, and hence was preoccupied. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.65.29 (talk) 07:33, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

hurridly ←→ hurriedly 2A00:23C8:A12:7600:15F9:5CD3:72E:ADE0 (talk) 09:46, 27 October 2021 (UTC)