My Chequered Career: Index
This is the beginning of a collection of my chess compositions. Fourteen new pages added, December 2010.
Chess Diagrams
A separate page on the various methods I have devised to show chess diagrams on web pages.
In another section of this website there is a biographical note on how my various interests in chess play, variant chess and problems developed.
Grasshopper Chess
This link leads to Historical and Technical Introductions to the Grasshopper,
and a number of pages of collected compositions, classified by stipulation and number of men.
The orthodox Grid Chess problems previously here are now in the Variant Chess section.
They can still be found there in incomplete form by looking for Dawson in the 'Composers' section.
However, since their location keeps changing every few years I am now including them here permanently.
T. R. Dawson
Biography
Caissa's Playthings
Early Work
Retro-Opposition and Other Retro-Analytical Chess Problems
I have also made a PDF scan of my copy of Retrograde Analysis by T. R. Dawson and W. Hundsdorfer (1915).
This copy was awarded as a prize to W. Langstaff in 1919 and is inscribed by Dawson on the inside cover.
This is due to be returned to the ECF Library, which recently moved to De Montfort University in Leicester.
To read PDF documents you need to have Adobe
Reader installed on your computer. It can be downloaded free from Adobe.
29 Aug 2019: The PDF does not now need rotating and the page that was duplicated has been removed.
When the Fairy Chess Review ceased publication in 1958 some of its regular contributors, at the instigation of the Rev A. W. Baillie, formed themselves into the Fairy Chess Correspondence Circle, which continued to keep the torch of Fairy Chess alight in this country for just short of a further quarter century. As was reported in the September-October 1983 issue of The Problemist the Circle finally closed in 1982.
For the record I list here all the members of the circle, in order of accession (with thanks to Cedric Lytton). The membership was limited to 12 at a time. Each member would send on a packet of papers to the next member on the list each month; removing his own contributions as they reached him again after passing round the circls during the year.
Each member identified his contributions by a letter code, as indicated
| A--- A. W. Baillie 58-60 | B--- W. H. Reilly 58-77 | C--- T. H. Willlcocks 58-82 |
| D--- W. B. Renton 58-66 | E--- W. Cross 58-74 | F--- H. H. Cross 58-62 |
| G--- C. E. Kemp 58-70 | H--- P. C. Asbury-Smith 59-66, 68-70 | J--- C. P. King-Farlow 60-68, 74-82 |
| K--- B. Tunks 60-61 | L--- J. P. Ford 60-68 | M--- F. R. Oliver 61-71 |
| N--- H. Handy 61 (Feb-Jun) | P--- E. T. O. Slater 61-80 | R--- J. M. Rice 62-66 |
| S--- J. E. Driver 62-64, 65-79 | T--- C. R. Flood 64-68 | U--- D. G. Fletcher 64-65 |
| W--- A. S. M. Dickins 66-81 | X--- W. B. Trumper 67-70 | Y--- C. C. Lytton (Sells) 68-82 |
| Z--- W. H. Duce 68-82 | AA--- P. R. Kings 68-73 | BB--- C. J. Feather 70-73 |
| CC--- E. Fielder 71-73 | DD--- I. Sinclair 72-73 | EE--- J. E. H. Creed 72-74 |
| Q--- R. Powell 72-82 | V--- A. I. Houston 73-82 | FF--- R. M. W. Musson 73-82 |
| GG--- G. P. Jelliss 74-77, 79-82 | HH--- C. M. B. Tylor 77-82 | JJ--- B. D. Stephenson 78-82 |
A collection of compositions by members of the Circle was published by Anthony Dickins at his Q Press as An Album of Fairy Chess in 1970.
Here is an item from R. M. W. Musson that I happen to have recorded:
FF35 What is the shortest game ending in an en passant capture giving mate?
1. Ph4 Pg5 2.PxP Pe6 3.Pe4 Sh6 4.Pe5 Ke7 5.Qh5 Pf5 6.gPxP e.p. mate.
This differs from the solutions given in my booklet on Synthetic Games but is the same length.