Two Stone Edge Squeeze /Naming Discussion

Discussion

Dieter: Sakata describes this tesuji as the "race to capture suji" in tesuji and anti-suji of go.

Bill Spight: Sakata doesn't really call this anything. In fact, suji can be plural (as with most Japanese nouns), and I think that is the case here. Sakata refers to three tesuji. First, the two-step hane ( in the Part One diagram), second the suteishi suji ( there), and third the horikomi (i.e. throw-in) ( in Part Two).

dnerra: Someone I know likes to call this the "2-Dan-Tesuji". He says he has observed pretty consistently that 1-Dans may miss this tesuji (in a game, not as a problem of course), while 2-Dans usually get it right. I was 1-Dan when I first heard that from him, had recently missed it in a game, and decided never to miss it again :)

MattNoonan: In Essential Joseki on page 186, Rui Naiwei refers to this as the "sliding weight" method of capture, referring to the sliding weight on a balance scale.

pwaldron?: John Power remarked to me recently that the actual translation for this should be tombstone squeeze rather than a stone tower or (from the [Slate & Shell] translators) stone pagoda squeeze. This discovery was apparently made after a fair bit of digging around in some dictionaries. I have no Japanese knowledge of my own and take this on faith, but looking at the position the two stones being squeezed do rather resemble a tombstone.

Bill: I like tombstone squeeze. :-) But it is not a literal translation. Tombstone in Japanese is 墓石 . However, it appears that the pagoda derives from the word stupa, which began as a burial mound for the Buddha's remains. And a tombstone can be a stone pagoda.

John F. I wrote about this tesuji in the new Go Companion as being the case of having perhaps terms than any other (some not mentioned here). Although I didn't say so there, the reason sekito is hard to find in ordianry Japanese dictionaries is that it was a term invented by Maeda Nobuaki (1950s, I thnk), and he intended it to mean the shape of a Japanese gravestone. Although I used tombstone in GC, it was with reservations. I tend to associate a tomb with a large underground burial space, whereas a Japanese gravestone really marks a place for burial of a tiny urn (if that), but on looking it up I found that tomb can apparently be used for a burial spot in general, so I stick with that. In any event, I think any references to pagodas and stupas are de trop.

BuggyMind: (consults a dictionary) I think the phrase 'de trop' is de trop.