A game that never was: Verney’s duodecimal chess

Abstract

Abstract A large chess variant played on a 12x12 board was inadvertently created by G. H. Verney, author of Chess Eccentricities, who seriously misinterpreted one of his sources, A. van der Linde’s Quellenstudien zur Geschichte des Schachspiels. Despite its serendipitous origins, the game, for which the name Verney’s Duodecimal Chess seems appropriate, is surprisingly playable. A set of rules is suggested since those provided by Verney are incomplete.