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26 Wednesday - December 1973
St. Stephen - Washington Crossed the Delaware 1776 - 360th day - 5 days to come

Rcd. [received] telephones call from Willard Allphin who had written to me concerning MONOPOLY (see 9/22/70). He has gotten THE SATURDAY REVIEW interested in his article on MONOPOLY. He asked if I had done any further checking on the story. Told him "no" that I was too busy trying to make a living. Told him that he should definitely get a look at Darrow's patent. He has been talking to Randy Barton and has an appointment tomorrow. He'll ask him to show him a copy. I asked Willard to let me know the issue if it is published.

At Goldsmiths bought another dozen (6 pairs) book-ends for $3.00. Priced the expanding folders files. They were $3.30 with a top flap and $3.00 without (much higher than the $1.00 Phil Orbanes had told me).
Called Phil Orbanes and asked him about the expanding files. He'll check with his secretary and call me tomorrow. He still thinks that the price was about $1.00.
He asked if I could get S.P.I. games, I said "yes - within reasons." Tomorrow he'll let me know the titles he'd like.

NEW YORK Magazine had a crossword puzzle with 7 different kinds of clues, a lot of which I couldn't understand. (Filed in '73 Misc. [1973 miscellaneous])

Philip Kaplan here with a puzzle he called JIGSAW MOSAIC. There is a field with spaces set together like haphazard bricks

[drawing of an arrangement of rectangles oriented in multiple directions]

with a number of empty spaces before in the layout. There are tiles in three colors which have to be placed in the spaces so that no two of the same color share an edge. He didn't have a model, but had a xeroxed copy which I filled out using numbers. Solved it quite easily.
He asked my opinion of its commercial possibilities. I told him about the other puzzle based on colors not being ne allowed to be next to each other, including LUCKY 13 PUZZLES and my SHAPE AND SHATTER. Told him that there certainly were no legal problems with his being a knock-off, but that I felt that manufacturers would not find it different enough to be exciting. I told him that I thought that Felicia would feel that way too, but that there was no harm in her his checking.
In the conversation it came up that he had had three books of puzzles published by Harper & Row: - POSERS, MORE POSERS, and PUZZLE ME THIS. The first, he said, was the best and sold about 20,000. They have also been put out in paperback - the first two by McFadden (spelling?) and the third by I don't remember.
He offered to send me one of the books but I said that, since he had bought THE RIGHT CONNECTIONS, I would buy a copy myself.
He bought a copy of THE RIGHT CONNECTIONS at Brentano's (because it was more colorful than FITTING & PROPER). He "solved" the puzzle by

(cont. on 12/25)