My name is John Chew and you can find out more about me at http://www.poslfit.com.

I have lived in Toronto since 1966, except for a few years in Japan, France, and Mexico.

You may have come across my name in the following contexts.

  • I have written four peer-reviewed mathematical papers about geometry and about meta-Fibonacci sequences.
  • I am a descendant of the same 17th century Virginia colonist John Chew as the 18th century Philadelphia lawyer Benjamin Chew, but not descended from Benjamin.
  • I was an 11-time contestant on the The New Quiz Kids.
  • I won the Canadian Mathematical Olympiad in 1981, and won a silver medal for the first team to represent Canada at the International Mathematical Olympiad in 1981 in Washington.
  • I won the first Toronto Rubik's Cube championship in 1981.
  • I created and edited the Inter-Network Mail Guide, an early reference work for the pre-web Internet, mentioned inter alia in IETF RFC 1175.
  • I was the 2021 recipient of the Peter Gzowski Award.
  • Since 2022, I have been involved in a Canadian lexicography project, and spoken on the subject at the American Dialect Society and Editors' Association of Canada meetings in 2023; I am not a linguist, but am a son of the Canadian anthropological linguist John J. (Jack) Chew, Jr.
  • I am involved in competitive Scrabble in many ways, including
    • being head of NASPA Games
    • having organized, directed or helped run every top-level English-language tournament in North America, England, Malta, South Africa, Thailand and the world
    • having a Swiss pairing system named for me
    • being the editor of the NASPA Word List
    • coheld for many the competitive record for highest-scoring game ending in a tie (at 502)


18+This user is an adult.
♂This user is male.
DadThis user is a father and proud of it!
This user is a mathematician.
Public domainThis user comes from Canada.
This user is of English ancestry.
This user is of Japanese ancestry.
S1This user is a Scrabble player.
@ This user plays NetHack.
xyzzyThis user has spent too much time in the Colossal Cave.
Perl-4This user is an expert Perl programmer.
C-3This user is an advanced C programmer.
css-3This user is an advanced Cascading Style Sheets user.
HTML-3This user is an advanced HTML user.
TeXThis Wikipedian is a TeX user.
js-2This user is an intermediate JavaScript programmer.
APLThis user can program in APL.
theyThis user considers singular they standard English usage.
to¦goThis user chooses to sometimes use split infinitives.
…in.Ending a sentence with a preposition is something that this user is okay with.
whomThis user insists upon using whom wherever it is called for, and fixes the errors of whomever they see.
.  TheThis user puts two spaces after a period.
A, B, and
A and B
This user prefers to use the serial comma only when its omission can be confusing.
CAThis user uses
Canadian English spelling.