The Flamingo, The Pushme-Pullyu and the Mao – all pieces in variant chess according to this site. I’m fond of house rules and rule variants in theory but they often seem rather forced: most games have players for whom knowing and tweaking the rules is a great deal more fun than actually gaming. It’s probably just because I find chess a grim pastime at best, but a lot of this stuff seems like a games equivalent of ‘dress-down Friday’: the supposed departure from the norm which just serves to reinforce its joylessness.