George Duke wrote on Tue, Jun 16, 2015 10:41 PM UTC:
What was happening ten years ago to the day?
http://www.chessvariants.org/piececlopedia.dir/caliph.html,
Caliph and Carpenter, http://www.chessvariants.org/piececlopedia.dir/carpentr.html, by Charles Gilman. Over the next five or seven years Charles would
become the most prolific designer of all time, even more productive than
Boyer or Betza, the previous leaders. All three maintained quality, no
philosophy of design for its own sake (like in my own facetious '91.5 Trillion
CVs'). What is amazing about Gilman's is the number of newly-invented
piece-types, over 1000. In contrast, I can think of several prolificists of
over 20 CVs who never invented a new piece.* Actually Caliph came about from
Hedden's, as the brief above shows, but Carpenter is one Charles Gilman's 1200 or 1500 new piece-types.
Also happening ten years ago to the day Morality XVI "Body of Chess." http://www.chessvariants.org/fiction.dir/poems/chess_morality_xvi.html. This week happens to be one for a papal encyclical on environment; there have averaged one Catholic encyclical a year the last 300 years.
*It is not at all necessary to have new piece-type for excellent CV, examples being Philosophers Chess, Eurasian Chess, Big Board, Mastodon, Three Player, Schoolbook to name a few, as well as mechanism CVs like Extinction Chess and Hostage Chess -- no new p-ts any of those. Charles just undertakes to name or invent every concept left; it started about ten years ago when searching for 3D chess forms and finding CVPage. He must think now it's his obligation as countryman to do what Dawson did for fairy problems, to fairy pieces.
