Placed Bugs Order

The placed bugs order is a compact string that records the sequence in which piece types are first placed on the board during a game. Each character represents one piece placement.

Encoding

Each piece type is represented by a single letter. Uppercase letters indicate white pieces and lowercase letters indicate black pieces.

LetterPiece
Q / qQueen Bee
A / aAnt
B / bBeetle
G / gGrasshopper
S / sSpider
L / lLadybug
M / mMosquito
P / pPillbug
D / dDragonfly
Example

A game where white opens with a Ladybug, black responds with a Ladybug, then white plays a Queen, and black plays a Mosquito would have the placed bugs order: LlQm.
Keep in mind that piece movements are not taken into account in this search.

Wildcards

When searching by placed bugs order, you can use wildcards:

  • ? matches exactly one piece (any type or color)
  • * matches any number of pieces (including none)

The search always matches as a prefix: Ll finds all games starting with white ladybug then black ladybug, regardless of what follows.

Examples
PatternMatches
LmGames starting with white ladybug, black mosquito
L?M?PWhite ladybug, any piece, white mosquito, any piece, then white pillbug (this would be searching for the antispawn setup for white)
*q*QAny game where the white queen was placed after the black queen
*bbAny game where black placed its beetles without any other piece placement between them