Oh blast. There are only two moves I can play which don't land me in Nidd. Neither are particularly palatable (one leads to a DH loop), and so I take the lesser of two evils.
From
Charing Cross, with other members of the game at
Island Gardens and
Covent Garden thus blocking moves in either North East or Easterly directions, the River to my back blocking any Southerly move, and DH being to my North West and in any case the only legal move in that direction or around to South West, I can head only due North, or within a few degrees of North.
All of this is made plain by my spending several hours reading the rulebooks last night; the 1666 Christopher Wren edition, the 1815 Waterloo edition, the 1837 Victoria Regina edition, the 1863 Metropolitan edition and the 1923 Grouping Amendments edition. All of which say that when a player is at any south coast railway terminus north of the river and barred from legally moving to the east, west or south and left only to go north, the game is at a stalemate.
A stalemate is also the subject of
the very first rule of all editions of the rulebook.... it is to be avoided at
all costs on penalty of being forced to go to a Justin Bieber concert. The second rule states that the first member of the game to discover the impeding stalemate must, on pain of otherwise relinquishing all accounts held at clubs, being cashiered from any military posts, annulment of any College or University honours or degrees
as well as being forced to attend the aforementioned Justin Bieber concert, can only make one move.
Mornington Crescent. Sorry 'bout this, chaps. Rules are rules no matter how much I was enjoying the game
