Thomas Rayner Dawson

Thomas Rayner Dawson (28 November 1889 – 16 December 1951) was an important English chess problemist and is acknowledged as "the father of Fairy Chess".

Thomas Rayner Dawson was one of the greatest chess composers in England and is regarded as a genius in chess composition.

He invented many fairy pieces and new conditions. He introduced the popular fairy pieces grasshopper, nightrider, and many other fairy chess ideas.

Career

His first chess problem
Dawson published his first chess problem, a two-mover, in 1907.

Publications of his chess problems

His chess problem compositions include 5,320 fairies, 885 directmates, 97 selfmates, and 138 endings.

His successes in numerous tournaments:

120 of his problems have been awarded prizes and 211 honourably mentioned or otherwise commended. He cooperated in chess composition with Charles Masson Fox.

Editor

Dawson was founder-editor (1922–1931) of The Problemist, the journal of the British Chess Problem Society. He subsequently produced The Fairy Chess Review (1930–1951), which began as The Problemist Fairy Chess Supplement. At the same time he edited the problem pages of The British Chess Magazine (1931–1951).

Motivation and personality

From The Oxford Companion to Chess:

"His genius did not set him apart from his fellows; he could find time for casual visitors, and would explain his ideas to a tyro with patience, modesty, and kindness. Although he won many tourney prizes much of his work was designed to encourage others, to enlarge the small band of fairy problem devotees. He composed less for fame than to amuse himself, confessing to another composer "We do these things for ourselves alone.""

Publications
Caissa's Playthings a series of articles in Cheltenham Examiner (1913)
Retrograde Analysis, with Wolfgang Hundsdorfer (1915)
Fata Morgana, with Birgfeld, Nanz, Massmann, Pauly (1922)
Asymmetry, with W. Pauly (1928)
Seventy Five Retros (1928)
Caissa's Wild Roses (1935)
C. M. Fox, His Problems (1936)
Caissa's Wild Roses in Clusters (1937)
Ultimate Themes (1938)
Caissa's Fairy Tales (1947)
The last five titles were collected as Five Classics of Fairy Chess, Dover Publications (1973), ISBN 978-0-486-22910-2.

References
 Pritchard, D. B. (2007). Beasley, John (ed.). The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants. John Beasley. p. 361. ISBN 978-0-9555168-0-1.
 Hooper, David; Whyld, Kenneth (1987). "Dawson, Thomas Rayner". The Oxford Companion to Chess. Oxford University Press. pp. 85–86. ISBN 0-19-281986-0.
 Petrovič, Nenad (1949), Šahovski problem, Šahovska centrala, p. 142

External links
T. R. Dawson: Biography
The early work of T. R. Dawson by G. P. Jelliss
Retro-opposition and other retro-analytical chess problems by T. R. Dawson based on Seventy Five Retros; includes further 64 retro-analysis and 3 fairy retros by Dawson
Retrograde analysis problem by Dawson from Encyclopædia Britannica
Dawson problems on PDB Server

Dutch Website ARVES.org: 3 endgame studies with solution are selected by him.

Source: Wikipedia, ARVES and others

T. R. Dawson: Biography. An excerpt:

"And now, what manner of man?

I would say of middle height, portly withal, comfortable and avuncular, a genial Yorkshireman, always essentially himself and quite devoid of “side” and similar nonsense; equable, never ruffled, never in a hurry, but light on his feet; a voice soft yet deep and full, a sparkle in his eye. Intellectually – a giant, in the range of his effective thought more extensive than most of us can appreciate; in his speed of working, supersonic – to use present day jargon. A lover of the open air, the Yorkshire Dales for preference, but he could make do with Surrey and the Downs. In his spare(!) time he showed a taste for light literature and it was quite normal for him to read from fifteen to twenty books a month. An inspection of his study and what he left behind helps us to realise the scale and scope of his non-professional activities – the great collection of thousands of classified fairy chess problems in twenty filing cabinets, six more of orthodox chess problems and mathematics, his own problems in fifteen loose leaf binders, a binder with a sheet for every FCR solver, recording solving scores; two further books of cross references by classification to all his chess problems and to the puzzles and problems of numerous types of which he had a large collection; five ms. quarto note books on pure geometry, in effect the solutions of over a thousand geometry problems, all beautifully set out: three large quarto ms. books, “Notes on the Theory of Numbers”; five volumes of chess problem “stories” from which Caissa’s Fairy Tales appear to have been compiled; a sixth volume of Original Puzzles – indeed he had a flair for puzzles of any kind. There are his little diaries which record every one of his chess problems on the day of composition; his note books (which I understand go back many years) recording every book he read. His light reading comprised thrillers of all kinds, scientific fiction and “good yarns”. Under May 1951 there are entered as read thirty books, and among the authors are O. Stapledon, E. F. Benson, “Sea-Lion”, A. M. Low, E. R. Burroughs, C. S. Lewis, V. Stratten, D. Keyhoe (The Flying Saucers are Real!). Under March 1945 are entered twenty-four books including five by R. A. Freeman and fourteen by D. L. Sayers. Another packet reveals in T.R.D.’s own hand, a copy of Sam Loyd’s Puzzle Magazines – 217 quarto sheets. This reminds us that T.R.D. was a great “writer”, indeed one is tempted to embark on the type of speculation – “If all the ms. sheets T.R.D. produced were placed end on end they would encircle the world ...” I myself have a pile a good inch thick of correspondence on chess and mathematics problems and various topics. This is just the residue, when the incidental has been discarded, and I am only one of his many correspondents. Truly a master of method, system, power and concentration. Do we all realise that every word of every F.C.R. was written out by T.R.D.? Have we thought of what is involved in producing the Solving Record? And one trembles to think how many letters he must have had from “earnest enquirers” and similar types. No doubt he dealt kindly with them all. Apart from his professional and chess publications, he also published work in The Mathematical Gazette, notably a most original innovation, “Match-stick Geometry”. I believe that when chemistry and rubber claimed T.R.D., mathematics lost an exponent of unusual power and originality. Certainly as a geometer and an analyst he would have made his mark. He had a remarkable insight into algebraic problems and an unusual power of generalisation. This power of generalisation is the key to his chess work and probably to all his work. I do not believe that he was attracted by the merely unorthodox (although he sometimes published it); he saw things “whole”; he saw “the relationships between things” in a manner and on a scale denied to the rest of us. I have always felt that Fairy Chess is an unfortunate misnomer, unfortunate because it suggests the bizarre and the unreal, with a dilettante exponent. His sense of public duty was expressed in his very active Presidency of the British Chess Problem Society from 1931-43 and in his work as an air-raid warden. I confess that I lack details of this but, need one say more than that he held a post of responsibility in Croydon (of all the uncomfortable places) and he stuck to it throughout the period of enemy activity! I recollect his telling me that he solved some 400 problems in geometrical conics during the “all-clear” intervals of his A.R.P. duties. And so we bid farewell to our friend T.R.D., our editor of F.C.R., the provider of many good works, and the inspirer of many more. A fount of ideas he helped to remove our blinkers, he set us on new ways; a friendly man, modest, and at heart, I believe, a romantic.

We shall remember him with gratitude and with pride, not to say affection."