Maybe the game wasn’t tic-tac-toe, but rather reversi (Othello). They still lost rather badly.
I once had someone ask me what is the face on the map of Europe, and I immediately answered Portugal without even having to look. Portugal is a profile with a giant mop of Spanish hair. I would never think of it as a rectangle (there’s a huge nose sticking out).
Finland isn’t part of Scandinavia.
Good point! It works, too, though we still have to assume some very poor play on the part of Portugal:
- Spain takes NW corner of the peninsula.
- Portugal takes the center.
- S takes NE corner.
- P slots in below—east central. Bad move, P, because…
- S takes SE corner, flipping the piece above and giving Spain the entire east column.
- P takes West Central, or the northern half of the current Portugal. I don’t think much of this move either, but it works out for the moment because instead of replying by taking the SW corner and flipping this piece, Spain’s response is…
- S takes north central, filling in the top.
- P takes SW, the better of the two choices, but less than great because
- S takes south central, the only remaining space, flipping the center square previously belonging to Portugal.
I would imagine that Portugal’s disastrous mistake in move 4 has been rehashed by historians as often as other military blunders. But I don’t know what the consensus explanation might be. Momentary lapse in concentration perhaps, or possibly snowblindness.
—And I can’t believe I actually worked out a whole game to see if it was possible within the rules.
ETA: whoops! Move 5 actually flips both of Portugal’s pieces. The end result is the same though.
Douglas Adams neglected to tell us (“Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” reference).
And at least the double phalli are flacid. It isn’t as if Northern Europe is pointing a massive erection at Canada.
Then again, we have the open-mouthed Quebec about to eat the Belcher Islands (Sanikiluaq, if you prefer).
And Louisiana giving everybody the finger, even if it is presented upside down (the outline of Louisiana, when not drawn with enough detail to show all the individual islands in the Mississippi channel in the Gulf looks to me like a short stubby arm hanging upside down with a bird being flipped at Mexico).
Gotta wonder at the nerve of someone from Saskatchewan questioning the border tidiness of another jurisdiction.
Wasn’t that Slartibartfast, as I recall?
Naah, these clearly are two stretches - the Pyrenees parallels the Belgium-Luxembourg-Rheinland-Pfalz-Saarland border, the Med coast more roughly parallels the Channel coast. It’s not just “logic-and-order”, it’s also rather obvious that there’s a big change in direction when the France-Spain border meets the Med.
I always assumed that it would have been the mice that gave Slartibartfast his award.
BEEEEEP! ERROR!
At the time Hispania/Spain was the whole peninsula. There has been no actual nation-state called Spain until 1841+ unless you want to count the Napoleonic invasion, which we don’t. During the 8th century, a handful of different pockets of resistance against the Muslim invasion created different (pseudo)-independent realms*, none of which happened to be called Spain: they were part of Spain, they were (mainly) in Spain, but none of them was Spain. The part which got the NW corner was initially called the Kingdom of Asturias or Oviedo; they later changed name to Kingdom of Leon when they captured that city and made it their capital (remember I mentioned we were still changing names every time the capital moved?). As DSYoungEsq already mentioned (thank you, counselor), the County of Portugal was created as an administrative subdivision of the Kingdom of Leon.
- In 1833, an illegal decree defined a nation-state called España by merging the previous ones of Castille and Navarre and removing the Laws of Navarre. You could say Navarre disagreed; eventually, an agreement was reached after 8 years of my foreparents running around the mountains and the guiris running after them
- Whether they were truly independent or happened to be tributaries of someone else, including Charlemange, Venice and Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), changed a zillion times.
This is perhaps a bit “angels on the head of a pin” as to the distinction between a nation-state and the state(s) controlled by a single monarch - but the rest of Europe had no trouble identifying what they meant by Spain, at least as far back as Charles V’s division of his empire in the mid-16th century.
Come to think of it, Lusitania resembled a narrow strip even less, containing most if not all of Extremadura. Though that predates by even more centuries the political entities named after Portugal.
And, no: I hold firmly to my “take” on this business.
Parallels only roughly: in my perception, more roughly and inexactly, than my “fifth side” Hendaye – Cerbere where Franco-Spanish border meets Med. – Med. coast on to Italy, parallels the Channel coast.
(Quote): … the Med coast more roughly parallels the Channel coast.(“Unquote”)
I would say (see above): better than “roughly”, and IMO the entire “fifth side” does quite a good paralleling act with the Channel coast.
(Quote): It’s not just “logic-and-order”, it’s also rather obvious that there’s a big change in direction when the France-Spain border meets the Med.(“Unquote”)
Said “change” is not obvious to me. The Golfe du Lion takes quite a big bite northwards out of the line; aside from that, the change in direction is, overall, only slight.
I’m thinking that we’ll need to agree to disagree on this matter…
Thing is, at the time “Spain took over the NW corner of the Iberian Peninsula” (early 8th century)
Spain WAS the Peninsula
there was more than one Christian realm there
and Portugal did not exist yet.
Your reference is off by almost 900 years and one whole King (it was Charles V’s son Philip II who was king of Spain and Portugal but did not join the Portuguese crown to the rest in terms of succession).
I’m in Portugal right now. I could ask someone for you.
I’m sure their answer will be “well, it fits on the page of the atlas nicely”.
The size of the feudal zones, the principalities kingdoms dukedoms provinces, etc, is basically set by N days ride… 2 days ride so the garrison in the middle is a day away from anywhere.
Or maybe it its because the map was drawn on stellae.
See a portugal area stellae …
I still can’t figure out how Portugal avoided getting gobbled up into the conglomeration of other Iberian kingdoms that we now call “Spain”. Especially considering that they did get gobbled up. Even if Portugal itself is no prize you could at least steal their colonies.
Well, as you noted they did get gobbled up after the disaster at El-Ksar el Kebir in 1578 made them an easy target. And the resultant involvement in Spain’s wars did indeed end in the loss of their Indian Ocean carrying trade hegemony and quite a few colonial possessions( mostly to the Dutch at that point ). Some of what they successfully clung to in East Africa was subsequently lost to the Omanis in the late 17th century when the monarchy was still in recovery.
Before that they sorta got lucky as at Aljubarrota.
They got loose from Spain pretty much only as a result of the Thirty Years War( 1618-1648, to a lesser extent though Rocroi may have been a back breaker in terms of morale if nothing else )and the Eighty Years War( the Dutch independence war, 1568-1648 )basically bankrupting and ruining the Spanish empire. Even then the Portuguese Restoration War itself dragged from 1640-1668. Under normal circumstances Spain still should have prevailed( at least on paper ), but some some poor performance on the battlefield and the aforementioned exhaustion proved too much.
Look closely at the map of Saskatchewan, and you’ll see spherical geometry at work. The eastern border is an extended series of steps about 40km long as the square township squares are adjusted to fit the globe.
NM