Semi-planar Steiner loops of cardinality 2n

It is well known that there is a planar sloop of cardinality n for each n≡2 or 4 (mod 6) (Math. Z. 111 (1969) 289–300). A semi-planar sloop is a simple sloop in which each triangle either generates the whole sloop or the 8-element sloop. In fact, Quackenbush (Canad. J. Math. 28 (1976) 1187–1198) has stated that there should be such semi-planar sloops. In this paper, we construct a semi-planar sloop of cardinality 2n for each n≡2 or 4 (mod 6). Consequently, we may say that there is a semi-planar sloop that is not planar of cardinality m for each m>16 and m≡4 or 8 (mod 12). Moreover, Quackenbush (Canad. J. Math. 28 (1976) 1187–1198) has proved that each finite simple planar sloop generates a variety, which covers the smallest non-trivial subvariety (the variety of all Boolean sloops) of the lattice of the subvarieties of all sloops. Similarly, it is easy to show that each finite semi-planar sloop generates another variety, which also covers the variety of all Boolean sloops. Furthermore, for any finite simple sloop of cardinality n, the author (Beiträge Algebra Geom. 43 (2) (2002) 325–331) has constructed a subdirectly irreducible sloop of cardinality 2n and containing as the only proper normal subsloop. Accordingly, if is a semi-planar sloop, then the variety generated by properly contains the subvariety .