Starting as least as far back as message 11645 (I didn't go back
farther) and continuing right up to the past few days, there has
been discussion of proper tripoints and proper countries and
sovereignty and ISO diglyphs and such.

With all due respect, I think you're missing the forest for the
trees. The focus seems to be so much on the hierarchy.

By the description on the home page, the focus is on "geopolitical
boundary points" and "general boundary issues".

By general agreement the top level game involves "countries". This
is virtually universal in any of these types of games. The Travelers
Century Club finagles their list of 330+ to suit the tastes of the
travel agent who runs it, and they call them countries. The AARL has
the DXCC program for the ham radio operators, and they use their
criteria for their 330+ countries. Although the total number is very
close, there are close to 100 differences between the two. Why?
Because they are playing a different game.

The BP game should be focused on boundaries. So, how can we use
boundaries to help refine our pursuit?

There are 3 kinds of independent countries:
1. landlocked
2. continental coastal
3. island

Using the 191 UN members as a starting point:
1. 41 landlocked (pretty obvious)
2. 104 continental coastal (33 in America, 70 in Africa/Eurasia,
plus Australia)
3. 46 island (including Bahrain and Singapore which are bridged to
the Asian continental mainland, and also including the UKGB&NI which
is both connected to Europe by tunnel and has this Gibraltar thing).

One other thing to start. By my rules each country has to be
completely surrounded by a boundary, which usually is composed of
two or more boundary segments.

This is again obvious for many landlocked countries. Lesotho has
just one segment, because it's an enclave of South Africa. Andorra
and Mongolia each is a "sandwich" because the two tripoints are with
the same neighbors. Most landlocked have 3 or more boundary segments
with normal different tripoints. The one complicating issue is
exclaves/enclaves; more on this later.

The basic rule for continental costal countries is that their
boundary continues into the sea until it completes the polygon.
Using the high seas as "everybody's land" allows for the tripoints.
Brazil is an easy example. The maritime boundaries with Uruguay and
French Guiana continue out to the 200nm tripoints, and then the
200nm boundary of Brazil complete the boundary segment. It also
objectively defines which islands are contained within "Brazil"
itself (like Fernando de Noronha), and which are not (Trindade and
Martin Vaz).

For island countries it's the same basic process.

What is the value here?

Take Kaliningrad. It does not have an ISO 3166-1 diglyph.

Who cares? There are international boundaries on the continental
mainland of Europe and in the Baltic Sea. By using the tripoints to
define the polygon of Kalingingrad both wet and dry, you've got a
country.

Now for those whose priority in life is making hierarchies, well
have at it. Put Kaliningrad as a subsidiary of Russia.

The fact that that ltplru is a tripoint of Kaliningrad, not
of "Russia", means that for purposes of this game it should not be
ltplru; we should have own own diglyphs for the geographically
separate portions outside the BOUNDARIES of the parent.

Focus on the geography, not the politics.

Look, I've got a lot more to say about a lot of this, and I'll read
your replies to see if you're interested or not.

Let me close by pointing back to the Subject of this message:
Tripoints and Tripointers and Tripointees.

You are the Tripointers.
We all know what a tripoint is.
I believe you've neglected to give the proper attention to the
tripointees: the actual countries that are surrounded by the
boundaries and the tripoints.