Vernon Rylands Parton (2 October 1897 – 31 December 1974) was an English chess enthusiast and prolific chess variant inventor, his most renowned variants being Alice chess and Racing Kings. Many of Parton's variants were inspired by the fictional characters and stories in the works of Lewis Carroll. Parton's formal education background, like Lewis Carroll's, was in mathematics. Parton's interests were wide and he was a great believer in Esperanto. Parton's early education stemmed from his father's schools, where he also assisted. Parton's father was principal of Cannock Grammar School and a small international boarding school for children. After completing mathematics at Chester Teaching College, Parton returned to his father's school to give private instruction to older children in Latin, French, German, English, shorthand, typing, bookkeeping, and mathematics. In the 1920s he was left in charge of the school while his father returned to teach in state schools. Ill health cut short Parton's teaching career. In 1960 Parton moved from Cannock to Liverpool, into a terraced house near Penny Lane, and published a series of nine monographs from 1961 to 1974 (also 1975 posthumously) detailing his inventions. He died from emphysema at age 77 in Liverpool on 31 December 1974. The same year, variant inventor Philip M. Cohen created the variant Parton Chess in his honour. Some chess variant inventions Cubic chess In this 6×6×6 3D variant by Parton, boards are denoted A (bottom level) through F (top level). Each side has six pieces: king (K), queen (Q), bishop (B), unicorn (U), knight (N), and rook (R); and twelve pawns. Game rules Pieces move the same as in Raumschach, except that pawns move and capture one step forward (either orthogonally, diagonally, or triagonally), but not directly upward or downward. As in chess and Raumschach, the objective is checkmate. White's starting setup: KAa1, QAb1, BAc1, UAd1, NAe1, RAf1; pawns on Aa2–f2 and Ba1–f1 Black's starting setup: KAf6, QAe6, BAd6, UAc6, NAb6, RAa6; pawns on Aa5–f5 and Ba6–f6 Variation Parton made a variation of cubic chess for the same gameboard: In compulsion cubic chess, capture is compulsory, there are no checks, and the object is capture of the opposing king. Alice chess Parton's most famous chess variant, played on two adjacent chessboards. A piece that completes its move on one board automatically "vanishes strangely off its board to appear suddenly on the other board, magically out of thin air!" A move in