The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-04-30
In New York
By PAUL HARRISON

New York,-There seems 10 have been a revival of all the slip pastime3 which we used to cali parlor games. PuZZels and riddles and even spelling bees have got all Manhattan scowling in conccntra- tion
 The parlor games now could he known more accurately as beer parlor games, since they are at present intriguing the customers of the cocktail lounges, the quies- CT night clubs, and particularly the sidewalk cafes. New Workers are continental enough to know that dalliance is very much in or. der at sidewalk cafes, 50 they sit around and think up ways of kill ing time. It is a form of boon dogglfng.
 Over at the Algonquin, where the literati meet, there's a game of word building which often is played for the luncheon checks. Each player, in turn, must add a letter fore or aft, and must be able, if challenged, to name the word of which his letter is a part For example, one player may start with G, the next makes it Gh. a third, IGH. If the next player makes 1t FIGH, he puts the fifth person on spot, because hell probably have to add T, and the contestant who completes any word is the loser. No plurals, past lenses, compound words or proper noun allowed.
 The most difficult word eve, evolved in such game turned ou: to be "euouae"-six successive vowels. Hearing of it afterward, was brash enough to bet thai there was no such word in any English dictionary. I lost. And Who Are You?
 The "Who Am r." game Ina. won a lot of converts latcIy 1t being suitable for playing any where, and adaptable to betting, One person is "It", and the others agree secretly on a differeIl identityafor him. He may be Cleo patra, the Prince of Wales, Bal Ruth, Aimee Semple McPhcrson or anybody. He is allowed % questions only by yes or no.
 It requires some pretty shrcwd deductive reasoning to isolate d single personality in 20 questions. For those who might like to try playing the game I'll say that the first few questions should be very general ones, such as Am 1 alive?" "Am I 8 man?', Am l a woman?", Am I political fig ure?", Do live in America ?'' and so forth.
 Casting a Spell
 Here's q list of ten words which can't all be spelled cor, rectly by one person in a thou sand. Make it ten thousand. In fact, I've never heard of any in- stance in which they all wen properly spelled. The words are exhilarate, sacrilegious, tranquin- ity, battalion, paraffin, supersede. liquefy, irrelevant, ecstasy and hypocrisy.
 And here's an amusing numer- ical trick: Write your age, mul. tiply it by two and add five. Mul. tiply by fifty, subtract hree hun dred and sixty-five, and add t, that the amount of change yo, have in your pocket under tn, sum of one dollar. Then add on, hundred and fifteen. The firsl two digets in the total will b, your age;' the last two will be tn, sum of money.
 Among the better puzzles ther, is the one about the two womer who were strolling along tn, street when they saw two me. approaching. One of the womc. said: Here come our fathers, tle husbands of our mothers, the ia thers of our children, and our own husbands" Maybe you ca. figure out how such a relation ship might be possible. If you give up, the answer is at the end Of the column.
 Calling Names
 It's always possible to start a ho; argument by asking which five people, if they died tomorro@. would create the biggest .beadlines.
 And speaking of celebrities and demises, I'm reminded that se9 eral hard-hcartetd newspaperma In New York have been participat- ing for years in 'ghoul pool. Names of well-known people are written on slips and drawn from hat. As soon SIS one of the famch: persons dies, the jackpot goes { the holder of that persona nar,e
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 Answer to the puzzle: Each wn. man had married the father Oi the other woman.