Nice! :) This is what it translated to:

Cool, thanks! I don't think I examined even half the total chessboards but that one certainly caught my eye.

I wonder why they let the Mongols hold onto a horizonless chessboard set...

Is that a reference to something?

There should be some universal rule of not painting the inventory number onto item with a perma marker. Since it look like it's uncoated wood the ink gotta be here forever. Taping a paper with a number is way less destructive.

But yeah, a nice find. I wonder how one is supposed to play it - if it's circular, without pronounced borders on Y axis.

I'm pretty sure that's just a meal tray being used as a display board, not part of the original chessboard. All the chess boards were designated but none of them were written on directly.

Good question about playability, maybe there's a border on the side we can't see from this angle.

There are opened shelves on both sides that are parts of that wooden foundation. I believe it is a part of that item. Someone just didn't give another thought to what they are doind.

Maybe there's some custom game mode, like a Road Rash with pawns, lol.

There's no clearance for the chess pieces on those two meal-tray extenders, so it seems unlikely those are integrated drawers meant for the chess pieces.

Road Rash chess, however, is something that makes a lot of sense to me, haha.

As a note, the same guy who started the museum 70 years ago is still alive and he's the only one that curates the display of everything in the museum. I actually got to meet him and talk to him, so it seems unlikely that after 744 other board displays that such a prominent mistake would occur or be displayed.

My town have a couple of decades old personal public expositions that lost their legal rights to call themselves museums for shenanigans like these, yeah. It is probably due to my local museum workers being too rigid about documentation, catologization and official guidelines for preserving oddities, but in this case I do stand with bullying people off from using perma markers on worthy subjects, just for them do it better nezt time.

Certainly, that makes sense, I was wondering why this board was hitting you so hard!

I asked the guide, the rotary display platform is a dinner tray.

You're right, they use extra platforms so they can permanently designate display codes without damaging original pieces.

I honestly think a circular Y axis is a really interesting twist on chess. Having to defend and attack ahead and behind? Sounds hard but very cool.

Completely agree, and you know what? The curator is not particularly interested in playing chess. He loves the system and execution but does not enjoy playing, apparently.

Said, I really think a rotating board is helpful in understanding 2d chess in the same way living at home prepares you for independent life. I have been thinking about that board for 2 weeks.

While I can absolutely see a Museum for Puzzles, Intelligence and its associated items, and I do respect any museum...

Imagine being invited to visit the "IQ museum" as a date or something. Imagine a regular proudly boasting about how often they visits the IQ museum. The official name "International Intellectual museum" is only marginally better.

There has to be a better name that doesn't invoke the image of a smart ass know-it-all.

A few building titles in UB sound culturally inappropriate in English: International Intellectual Museum, The Mongolian Art Center for Children's Creativity, The National Academic Drama Theatre.

It's not a unique phenomenon by any means; many countries have grand names for certain buildings that sound strange in English. Part of the reason in Mongolia must be the dearth of English-speaking tourists here and English not being a mandatory school course, so those aggrandizing names sound normal in Mongolian naming convention and haven't been Westernized yet.

The IQ museum seems to have realized this and "IQ museum" is their respectable attempt to reconcile the cultural connotations of their name since they get a relatively high percentage of foreign English-speaking visitors.

With so few English speakers in Mongolia though, the priority for colloquial names that fit into Anglo naming conventions isn't a high priority.