Fun Stuff
Peanuts Trivia Quizzes
Peanuts reruns date conversion chart
Peanuts: Years in review
[1997]
[1998]
[1999]
[2000]
[2001]
Peanuts Books Wishlist
Peanuts Collector
Club Homepage
Dilbert Strip Finder
[Dilbert]
[Luann]
[For Better or For Worse]
[Pearls Before Swine]
[Cul de Sac]
[Off The Mark]
[Peanuts]
[FoxTrot]
[Bound and
Gagged]
[Between
Friends]
[Dustin]
[Sherman’s Lagoon]
[Zits]
[xkcd]
Pseudoku puzzles (i.e., Sudoku variants)
that I composed for G4G7
(the 7th
Gathering for Gardner)
The Onion,
LarkNews,
and some Christian news satire of my own
Some poems that I’ve written
A premise for a movie that I would love
to see made
Goodman’s original definition of grue
Math in the
Movies
Rec.humor.funny
archive (jokes; some are offensive)
Look up words at
Online
Webster or
OneLook
Comparison shop for books at
Bookfinder
or AddALL
or BooksPrice
What does your phone
number spell?
Urban
Legends
Foreign currency exchange rates
Dylan’s
Hakka Homepage
English/Chinese
test
Hobbies:
[Chess]
[Othello]
[Badminton]
[Juggling]
[Inversions: Scott
Kim and John Langdon]
Downloadable
Othello programs (the best is
WZebra)
Othello Java
applets (the best ones are
Booby Reversi,
Reversi V2.4,
and
Panda Reverse)
My Chess Problems
I have composed a few unusual chess problems.
In Ein Kleines Schach, the game is played on
a Klein bottle (click here
for the solutions).
The remaining problems take place on a standard board,
but for the next two problems,
you need to know what “free-capture chess“ is.
In free-capture chess, you may capture not only your opponent’s units,
but your own units as well (except that your own units do not check or capture
your own king).
The problem below was first published as problem F159 in
Problemesis
33. White to move and mate in 2 (free-capture chess).
The next problem, whose composition was a collaborative effort
with Philip Lin, was first published in 2003, as F0149 in issue SG23 of
StrateGems magazine.
It has two parts. Part (a) is a helpmate in 2 (i.e., Black and
White cooperate to checkmate Black after each player makes two moves,
with Black moving first); standard rules of chess apply.
Part (b) is also a helpmate in 2, with exactly the same position,
but with the free-capture rule in force.
For the 1996
MIT Mystery Hunt, I composed the following problem.
Find the shortest legal chess game that results in the position below.
For the 2013
MIT Mystery Hunt, I composed the two positions below.
In each case, determine if the position could arise in a legally played chess game,
and if so, whose turn it is to play.
(These problems were also reprinted in the Puzzle Corner
of MIT Technology Review, in the May/June 2018 and July/August 2019 issues
respectively.)
For more information about chess problems, see the
chess problem glossary from
Problemesis:
[Basic]
[Stipulations]
[Themes]
[Types of
pieces]
[Fairy pieces]
[Common
conditions]
[Constraints]
[Other
conditions]
Backgammon
Chow’s Checkerplay Challenge #1
Chow’s Checkerplay Challenge #2
Chow’s Checkerplay Challenge #3
One-page summary of backgammon opening replies
Rollouts of positions from
Robertie’s 501 Essential Backgammon Problems
Rollouts of positions from
Wiggins’s Boards, Blots, and Double Shots
Are there undefined equities in backgammon?
Equities for Murat’s
Hypestgammon:
[C source code]
[Backgammon value = 1]
[Backgammon value = 2]
Peever backgame quiz (Memorial Day 2013)
Nigel Merrigan’s Dual E-Pip/Metric Formula for
gauging races
“Naccel” pip-counting (cached from BGOnline; internal links may not work):
FAQ
1
2
3
3x
4
4x
5
5x
6
6x
7
8
8x
9
10
11
12
12x
Backgammon stoplight charts
Stick’s Backgammon Forum
(use this page to make
diagrams for posting on Stick’s forum)
Tough
backgammon quizzes by “Othello” Itikawa and others
Motif Backgammon
Puzzles
MIT IAP Mystery Hunt
(perhaps the world’s best team competition)
Rec.puzzles archive
(lots of classic chestnuts)
Puzzle
World (mechanical puzzles)
Tumbleweed
(mechanical toys and puzzles)
Puzzle Solver
(mechanical puzzle solutions)
The Grey Labyrinth
(new puzzles all the time!)
Mathpuzzle.com
(puzzles with strong mathematical content)
Non-chess
retrograde analysis
(a small selection of highly original puzzles)
Gathering for Gardner
Where I Got My Gifs
When I downloaded free GIFs from these sites, I agreed to link to them
from my own page. However, their URLs seem to keep changing.
I try to keep up with this constant flux, but sometimes it’s impossible.
In one case the site seems to have been absorbed into a larger entity,
so I have dropped it from this list.
[Image-O-Rama]
[Anthony’s WWW
Images]
[The Graphic Station]
Back to Timothy Chow’s Homepage