Why Is the Rook so Short?

you lot are all under arrest for excess BS!!! hands on the bonnet!

the rook is so short because i kicked it in the nuts and now its permanently hunched over on its knees.

How do you define excess BS? I think we've got about the right amount.

Well, Beuford, I see you are big enough to admit when you are wrong.

I take my hat off to you sir.

you know, Alexander the Great was only 4 ft 11 inches tall.

Napoleon, about 5 ft 6"

I could go on but being short does not mean you will not achieve your full potential.

I myself am a mere 6ft and look what I have achieved. 

I'm looking. What have you achieved?

I must ask why this factual error was the one you focused on? Why not contest the idea that stone structures can move at all?

Why is the rook so short?

Maybe when they are shoved in corner they aren't to excited.

                                                                            =

Now that ought to make the rook stand tall.

It made me want to get a bonner

My rooks are plastic. They move rather easily.

We know what you meant to say.

You forgot the plus sign.

You assumed I forgot.  

I see.  You intentionally omitted the plus sign.

28 pages of this thread and still the truth about why the rook is so short has not been revealed?  And here I thought FBloggs advertised that he could get you nowhere faster.  28 pages!  Harrumph.

Frankly, I'm surprised.  It's a known fact that the filmmakers of This is Spinal Tap based their little Stonehenge bit on the historically-accurate inaccuracy of the size of the rook.  When the game designer drew up the plans for the chess pieces, he inadvertently used the wrong unit symbol when dimensioning the piece.  And now we're stuck with it.

Actually, the truth of the rook's height was revealed (at least to my satisfaction) 26 pages ago courtesy of this thread's official historian, chessspy1.

"Actually, this question about the relative sizes of the chess pieces does deserve to be taken seriously in my opinion.

"I have written an article on the origin of the Staunton pattern chess pieces which is the correct and last word which needs to be said on that.

"The Edel family of woodturners in Germany had quite a lot to say about the different size of the pieces, Micharl Edel said that the tops of the pieces should slope down in size if a rule were placed along the tops of the pieces when they were in their start positions.

"So it is the rooks destiny because of its position at the edge of the board to be the shortest of the main pieces."

So rather than 28 pages to nowhere, it was two pages to somewhere. Pretty damned efficient, no? Of course we're still here but that's 'cause we've got other things to talk about as well as looking at pictures of scantily clad women. Oh you missed that, huh?