Editorial

I'd like to welcome you to Issue 40 (yes, it's the big 4-oh this
issue) with a funny story. Just as the last issue was going out,
our cat, Lucy, decided to ring John Moore at 1/4 to 1 in the
morning. To cut a long story short, we have a hands-off phone on
the desk in the spare room and she had pressed the speaker button
and recall button and re-dialled the last number, which belonged
to poor John who I'd rung that evening. He was confused to get a
'silent' phone call in the middle of the night. I was even more
confused to hear a male voice coming from our spare room.  It
wasn't until several minutes after John had hung up that Alan and
I realised what had happened so I apologised to John the next day.
It shouldn't happen again as I am now putting the phone out of
Lucy's reach overnight, but if she'd done it to anyone else
previously ... sorree!!!!

Competition results - congratulations to Theo Clarke who was the
only person to work out that Richard's pseudonym was Roy Sims.
Well done, Theo, some good detective work there! Theo was very
pleased with his prizes and there is a letter (okay, a FAX) from
him in the Letter section.  I had a good pile of entries - thanks
to everyone who took the time to enter. However, no-one has
guessed who Nogwidget's alter ego is. Rather than just let
Nogwidget put a claw into a hat and select a winner at random (the
prize, to remind you, is a snazzy Dragonlance mouse mat),
Nogwidget decided to write a short poem to give a hint. It will
only be of help to those of you who have been taking SynTax for a
while, but new readers will be saying 'Nog-who?' anyway and not
have any idea what we're talking about! There's nothing to stop
them guessing, but for the rest of you, here is Nogwidget's poem.

                         * * *
Dear Medley Human Person, from Limboland I call,
Who won the competition? What - nobody won at all?
A clue is what I'll give them, forthwith in order that,
You can reveal my identity, and get rid of the dragon mat.
In the same issue of SynTax, when my acquaintance I did forge,
My alter ego did write of me, and mentioned old Saint George.
                         * * *

Please have another go before Nogwidget crashes my computer in a
fit of pique because no-one cares!

How many of you worked out what the letters on your disk label
meant last issue? Just to clear any confusion, they show the state
of your subscription. The letter before the / refers to the
current issue, any letter after to the next one. X means a paid
issue, b a bonus issue and f a freebie.  So x/x means you have at
least one more issue to go, x/b means the next one is your bonus
one, x/ or b/ means this is your last issue and, if all has gone
according to plan, you should have a renewal form in the padded
bag. It should help you know whether your sub is due and it saves
me cross-checking against a printout to know who is due to a
renewal form. Case solved.

On the subject of renewals, I am almost out of the black disk
boxes which some of you pick instead of the free issue when you
subscribe for a year. I have got some crystal ones which hold 10
issues so will be offering those from now on ... unless anyone
knows of a source of 12-disk black boxes. Please let me know if
you do. I bought over 100 last time but the firm I got them from
vanished ages ago, and despite searching through the adverts, I
can't find any equivalents. So, from now on, the disks will just
be labelled with SynTax's name and the wizard logo.

The SynTax Readers' Profiles as suggested by John Nicholls start
this issue. It would be great if more of you wrote in and told us
a bit about yourself - if you also want to send in a photo, I'll
scan it in and put it in the Screenshots section of SynWin.
There's ones of Alex and Juri, and Robbie and me to start it off!

Well, I think that's it for another issue. I hope you all have a
happy, successful and adventurous 1996.
                                                    Sue




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