Letters

If you write in on an adventure-related matter and your letter
isn't marked "Not for Publication", I'll assume it's okay for me
to quote from it here.
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Tony Woolcock, Southampton

May I take this opportunity to inform you and your readers that
Quiz is now available from me free of charge. As you know Quiz
is a trivia quiz that relates to the history of the Police and
questions relating to the game The Blag.

Quiz can be run as a stand-alone program or from within the Blag
itself, the latter being for which it was originally designed.
Depending on the correct answering of questions, help files will
be loaded to assist in the playing of The Blag.

The help files consist of text and digitised graphics now in
colour.

Although the disk will contain a stand-alone program, the real
strength of Quiz lies in its ability to be played from within
The Blag itself, allowing the player to play Quiz without having
to reset the computer. When the player wishes to return to The
Blag he simply enters the correct key and resumes play from
where he left off.

Quiz adds more power to a game. "That is not like every other
adventure you've ever seen. Far from it. The Blag has got loads
of interesting ideas, unusual routines and is a barrel of
laughs." Not my words but taken from Mike Gerrard's review in
the March issue of ZERO in which it was given a very impressive
rating of 80.

If you have a copy of The Blag or would simply like to play Quiz
please send a stamp for the return postage and a formatted disk
to me at 30, Lyndhurst Road, Ashurst, Southampton.
@~Quiz is reviewed in this issue.

Neil Shipman, Bristol

Here are my contributions for March's SynTax as promised. It was
nice to see that so many different readers sent something in for
Issue 10. I enjoy seeing what other people with obviously varied
tastes in adventuring think about particular titles, so I'd like
to put in a plea to anyone who hasn't yet thought of doing so to
@+send in a review of something they've played recently. ~(I'll
@~second that - it doesn't have to be a current game either as
@~quite a few of the "golden oldies" are still readily available
@~new or secondhand.)

Now a couple of questions for you. Firstly, something which I've
wondered about before but only thought to ask now. What made you
choose SynTax for the title when the magazine first appeared
back in 1989?
@~We originally wanted a title that started with ST.... but
@~STart was already being used and we didn't fancy the sound of
@~STeeplejack, STreptococcus or STrangle etc so we looked at words
@~starting with S and with a T in the middle. SynTax seemed a good
@~choice with its programming links. It seemed even more apt when we
@~were programming it and kept getting the message "syntax error"!

And secondly, how international is it? I know there's
Alex in the Netherlands and Claire in France, but how many other
subscribers live abroad?
@~There have been around 20 SynTax readers abroad, not all of whom
@~became regular subscribers and they are mostly in Europe though
@~there is one subscriber in Australia (Hi, Jan!). Only one issue
@~has ever gone to Canada and so far there aren't any subscribers
@~in the States. I'm still hopeful though!