Excellent and inspiring!
I started N2T in 2014 and completed up to chapter 6.
To do the rest of the chapters, I had to learn to programme.
Taught myself python and VBA and ended up developing a fully functional chess engine in MS Excel.
I had earlier used an excel sheet as an assembler for chapter 4 as I didn't know then to programme in python.
Now I am done with my hobby engine development and back to N2T.
Hope to complete this soon and do a physical implementation in FPGA as you did.
By the way, my chess engine is here on Github.
https://github.com/Manulal-M-Inasu/chess-in-excelThanks
Manu