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November 1975 - Sunday 23
Christ the King - 327th day - 38 days to come

Called Martin Gardner. He said that he just spoke to Pierre Berloquin - mainly about the manuscript for 100 JEUX ALPHABETIQUES GEOMETRIQUES, etc.
I told him of my letter from Wade Philpott. He sees Philpott once a year when Philpott, who is in a wheelchair, comes to Westchester to visit a child. Philpott is preparing a definitive book on combatorial "Combinatorial Mathematics."
Martin told me that he received a game from England - ADVICE - which he will give to me. Told him that I had heard about it and he thought that the rock-paper-scissors idea was interesting.
Don't remember how it came up but Martin started telling me about an idea he had many years ago for a 3-D game. There are two floors with a stair between them. It can be folded up and then opened. He has lost the model but can reproduce it. As a theme he thought of a family of ghosts fighting a human family for the house possession of the house. He called it GHOSTS.
He tried to interest a manufacturer in it without success. Then he saw WHICH WITCH? which also uses a 3-D house. He ne
He never worked out the rules of play and suggested that may- be I'd like to work on it, offering the idea to me. I said that I'd like to work on it together with him, and he said maybe we'll get together when he gets back from a holiday visit to Tulsa.
At a bazaar in Queens bought 5 rolls of masking tape for $1. Not very good quality.
Dave Horn showed me a book that Susan was using in her student teaching: MATHEMATICS - A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE by Harold R. Jacobs. It is published by W. H. Freeman & Martin Gardner did the intro- duction. There is a great deal of use of recreational math in the book.

(cont. from 11/22) [11/22]

now that X'mas [Christmas] was coming.
Looked at SHOPPING (© 1973 John Ladell Co., Inc., Canton Miss.) Each player gets a shopping list and enough "Purchase cards" to by half of them; each item takes one purchase card. Players must earn extra purchase cards - by landing on lucky spaces. The board shows various stores and the each item can be bought in several stores. If a player passes the police station (which is also on the board with various other spaces) without a "meter validation" he suf- fers some kind of a penalty. (Fairly rough idea.)
Looked at O-SHLEMIEL! It is a regular deck of cards but each card also has a letter. A number of games are given - none very original. One - I remember - was a RUMMY type with sequences of letter and also words allowed as melds. It was expensive - $5 a deck - and John suggested my getting a review copy.
{Originals Only
15 W. 44 St.
New York, N.Y. 10036
(cont. on 11/19)

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