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Excellent graphics, representative of the early 21st century period school of Chess Variant artistry, some would say art for art's sake. Actually, Overby's Beautiful Sun conveys a deep message not to abuse Pawns. Shogi Gold, Shogi Silver, and Orthodox Western Pawn get equal respect and billing in milieu of splendid colourations. ''The broken line of Pawns is a Xiangqi influence,'' explains Glenn, ''Meriqi attempts to blend features of the three largest branches of Chess.'' Editor Peter Aronson joyfully evaluates 'Excellent', ''This looks fun, Glenn, I'll have to try it.'' Michael Nelson gushes: ''A most pleasing blend of Western Chess, Xiangqi and Shogi. The piece set is most entertaining and seems to work well together.'' Overby itemizes self-adulating, ''The Gryphon comes from the 13th Century European great chess game Grande Acedrex.'' Far more interesting than this game itself -- or any recent CV really -- are assorted trivia that come up on case basis, notably here several number of acceptable English-language spellings, probably all-time record in the language, of the particular widely-used 700-year-old bent rider: Gryphon, Gryphen, Griffen, Gryphin, Griffin, Griffon and Griphon, roughly in descending order, one and all good-enough usage. A spinoff new CV could tweak each back-ranked alternate with King: 7 different-moving ''grfns'' on 8x8, each clearly demarked as separate in having own directions and/or distances.