On April 21, 1997, a picture of a board with 37 squares was put on the WWW site of the Chess Variant Pages, and I (HB) asked for a variant that could be played on this board. One of the three variants I received came from David Howe. Below, you find his description of the game, which started with:
Happy 37th Birthday! At least I assume it's your birthday and that you're 37...
Anyway, here's a variant I thought of just now - obviously not play tested!

The starting setup is:
+---+---+---+
| r | k | r |
+---+---+---+---+---+
| n | b | q | b | n |
+---+---*************---+---+
| | * p | p | p * | |
+---+---*---+---+---*---+---+
| | * | | * | |
+---+---*---+---+---*---+---+
| | * P | P | P * | |
+---+---*************---+---+
| N | B | Q | B | N |
+---+---+---+---+---+
| R | K | R |
+---+---+---+
Last modified: Sunday, April 1, 2012