Is Greenland an island?

By your very own logic, Greenland is an island.  Just as sz2 ends at the maps edge so does greenland.  Whether that’s true in real life is irrelevant.Â

However other compelling evedince can be found in the fact that every other Island on the map has it’s seazone named after it

West Indies Seazone (sz19); Hawaiian Seazone (sz52);  Midway Seazone (sz56); Wake Is. Seazone (sz51); Solomont Is. Seazone (sz45); New Zealand Seazone (sz41); New Guinea Seazone (sz47); East Indies Seazone (sz37); Borneo Seazone (sz48); Philippines Is. Seazone (sz49); Caroline Is. Seazone (sz50); Okinawa Seazone (sz58)

SZ2 is labeled the “Greenland Seazone” which supports my assertion that Greenland is in fact an Island.

I have submitted the question to the designers site, let’s see what they have to say.

@jsp4563:

By your very own logic, Greenland is an island.  Just as sz2 ends at the maps edge so does greenland.  Whether that’s true in real life is irrelevant.

However other compelling evedince can be found in the fact that every other Island on the map has it’s seazone named after it

West Indies Seazone (sz19); Hawaiian Seazone (sz52);  Midway Seazone (sz56); Wake Is. Seazone (sz51); Solomont Is. Seazone (sz45); New Zealand Seazone (sz41); New Guinea Seazone (sz47); East Indies Seazone (sz37); Borneo Seazone (sz48); Philippines Is. Seazone (sz49); Caroline Is. Seazone (sz50); Okinawa Seazone (sz58)

SZ2 is labeled the “Greenland Seazone” which supports my assertion that Greenland is in fact an Island.

I have submitted the question to the designers site, let’s see what they have to say.

Good job on submitting that question to the designers.  But your logical argument that “that every other Island on the map has it’s seazone named after it”

1.  posits as part of the argument that Greenland is an island by implication “every OTHER island” implies that Greenland is an island.  Which it IS, but not necessarily for game purposes, which is the subject of the question.

2.  If all oranges are fruit, it does not logically follow that all fruit are oranges.  If every other island on the map has a seazone named after it, it does not follow that every territory that has a seazone named after it is an island territory.

I am not familiar with the source that names seazones as you mention.  Are those the ONLY sea zones under that source that are named?  For example, what is sea zone 10 called?  Is it called the “E. US Seazone”?

The critical word is “inside”. Unfortunately, it is ambiguous.

I argue that for the purpose of an island, “inside” means “entirely surrounded by” - that’s what an island is in real life, a piece of land that is surrounded on all sides by water.

NPB introduced a helpful concept with his example of Italian East Africa, which is that of topology. Topology is the study of shapes and especially their continuity and holey-ness. Topologically, a donut and a coffee mug are identical - both are solids with one shape. If both were made of playdough you could mold one into the other without disturbing the hole.

Now, topologically, Greenland is not a “hole” in the seazone next to it. you could squish greenland flat against the edge of the board and turn both it and the sea zone into rectangles lying alongside each other - then it would become apparent that Greenland (on the AA map, because Sea zones also only exist on the AA Map, and the definition of island is one meant for the AA Map) does not lie within the seazone, but next to it.

The fact is, the seazone does not stretch around Greenland.

A clearer example yet would be India - it’s even a similar shape, and has water in a horseshoe shape around it. Its northern edge does not see ocean, and yet it is “surrounded” (but not “inside” the seazone.

If however this definition of “inside” is not accepted, then the word is ambiguous and you have to look to other circumstantial reasons. None of these are conclusive but if the word “inside” itself does not answer it there is no choice but to consider other aspects of it.

1. Greenland is considerably larger than any other Island. If you say the airbase is just on the tip, that could also be said for India, FIC,
   South Africa, Italy, Soviet far East, IEA, etc.
2. Greenland is not in the Pacific Theater, where the rule is intended to help out.
3. Yes, the water does not encircle Greenland as it does the islands in the pacific
4. Madagascar, much smaller, does not fit the rule.

Eh, let’s just see what LH has to say…

It’s clear that the fact that greenland & sz2 butt up against the edge of the map board is what creates the abiguity in this case.  Does that abuttment constitute attachement to something that would disqualify greenland as you argue or does the map simply end at the edge with greenland attached to nothing placing it entirely “inside” sz2 as I would argue.  India’s attachement to other territories would clearly disqualify it as lying “entirely inside” SZ35, and the Eastern US occupies 2 seazones (Sz10-E. US Seazone/GSZ-Great Lakes Seazone)

According to Larry Harris, Greenland is NOT and Island.

“In the spirt of the game… Greenland is NOT an island.”
-Larry Harris