Interview with Timothy Newton

Congratulations with winning the first prize in the contest to design a chess variant on 84 squares and thank you for letting us conduct this interview with you.

Thank you! I enjoy your web site and had a lot of fun entering the contest!

Can you tell us something about yourself: what year were you born, where do you live, what your interests are, etc.?

I am the second of four children. I have two brothers and a sister. We are all home schooled. I was born in February of 1992. I live in Kent City, a small town in West Michigan. I love pets and we have a lot of them: two cats, one dog, four white mice, two gerbils, ten fish (they are mine), and my older brother Andrew has a hamster.

How did you come to the design of Outback Chess, your winning game?

Well, I was thinking about entering the contest when the board design popped into my head. After that, I spent some time designing different types of pieces. Once I had decided how the pieces should move I wrote my rules. After I play tested my game with my older brother Andrew and my Dad I submitted my variant!

Why did you pick an Australian theme for the game? And why did you choose the Echidna as the royal piece?

It just so happens that I was studying Australia in school at that time. I really thought that it was a cool country and the echidna is a native creature that I also thought was neat. I would love to visit Australia some day and see a real echidna (and a real kangaroo and a real wallaby, and a real koala...well, you get the idea)!

What was your reaction when you learned that you won the contest?

I was extremely surprised when I found out that my game had made it to the finals. The story of how I found out that I won is really funny! I was sound asleep when my Dad checked his e-mail and found out that I won. He came into my bedroom and tried to tell me the good news that I had won, but I sleep really soundly and he could not wake me up! So the next day he called me from work and told me I had won. I was so excited that I ran through the house telling my brothers and sister "Hey! I won the 84 Spaces Contest!"

What are your favorite chess variants?

Hmmm. I have only played a few chess variants. My favorites are orthodox Chess and Chinese Chess.

Do you regularly play chess, eg., in a club, or by e-mail? How did you learn to play chess?

I really don't play Chess a lot, I occasionally play a game with my brothers or my Dad. My Dad taught me how to play Chess when I was younger. I learned how to play Chinese Chess about two years ago. Dad just bought David B. Pritchard's book, Popular Chess Variants, and I plan to try some more variants in the near future.

Do you play games other than chess and chess variants? What are your favorites? And how do you play them - with friends, over the Internet, against a computer?

Absolutely! I like games like games Monopoly, Yahtzee, and the computer version of Risk. I also really like my Nintendo!

Do you have other hobbies?

I enjoy playing piano, video games, and writing. I especially like writing children's books, and I hope to publish my book Sheep on the Go! soon. This is the first of five children's books I have written in my Sheep series.

Do you plan to design any more Chess variants?

I am working on a design for a Lord Of The Rings variant. If I finish the rules, I will send them in to the Chess Variant Pages. I may even enter a future C.V.P. variant contest!

Are there other questions that we should have asked, but didn't, but that you still want to answer?

None that I can think of!

Thank you for answering our questions!

You're welcome! Thank you very much for your fine web site and for this interview, it was my very first!