Thanks for the feedback. You're right: for players with more than beginning skill, I agree that Fig 3 is alive (and Peter de Blanc is right that Fig 2 is not "unconditionally alive") in the original versions of the figures. I've revised Figures 2 and 3 accordingly. (So the rest of you shouldn't worry if this comment thread seems confusing! If you're interested, the original versions are here and here.)

In choosing examples, I was aiming for arrangements that visually conveyed the three states of close surrounding, surrounding with internal structure, and something intermediate. The goal is to be able to talk about "life" and "death" as alternative states the game might be in, like alternative hypotheses of reality, to serve the go/rationality analogy, without having to explain the rules. I hope the revised versions still do this, while making their labels more correct.