Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.

42-Square Design Contest Results

A total of 21 very interesting Chess variants played on 42 "squares" were submitted by 18 designers for this contest. The judges have played each of these games at least twice, and it has still not been easy for us to decided what game comes in what place. But, since it would be hard to give out the prizes if we didn't rank the games somehow, we have come up with the following ordering.

The Winners

1st Place Life, the Universe and Everything, by João Pedro Neto.
2nd Place (tie) Mini Thunder Chess, by Fergus Duniho.
2nd Place (tie) Border Wars, by Jared B. McComb.
4th Place Goal Box Chess, by Kevin McPartland.
5th Place Thronschach, by Glenn E. Overby II.

Honorable Mentions

In no particular order:

Our Selection Methodology

Actually, we did have a method. As mentioned above, we played each game at least twice. Then, after playing a game the second time, we would separately rate each game on the following five criteria:

When we were done, we added all of the ratings up to get an ordered list of games. We then used this ordered list to help pick the winners.

Interpretation

You shouldn't read too much into our rankings. We are both idiosyncratic variant designers, and what appealed to us might not appeal to someone else. It might have been nice to have played the games more times, say four times each, but since one of the judges lives in Arizona, and the other in Illinois, play had to be by e-mail which takes a rather long time.

Thanks!

The judges would like to thank everyone who submitted a game. It's been a lot of fun playing and examining your games, and we had a great time doing it.
Written by Peter Aronson and Tony Quintanilla.
WWW page created: September 17th, 2002.