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Show The Daily Utah Chronicle. Thursday, December 7. 1978 Page Nine , 4 by JAN BROBERG-CART- J r , i ' adults than kids. The hand model of Merlin is available for less than S200.'" To save the player from total frustration. Holly so he cannot programmed "Merlin" to play win every game. One error on the player's part and "Merlin" would win every time. "Merlin" loses some of the time to encourage and interest the player, especially the kids. Although the "field is still primitive." Bob added, computers are an integral part of thousands and thousands of toys on today's market. "Texas Instruments has a computer toy on the market called 'Speak and Spell' that plays Hangman and has a vocabulary of 300 words. It is an educational computer toy that adults and kids like to play with," he said. "Merlin" can store 24 notes. Melodies are punched in on a telephone-liksquare button and sounds similar. Mountain Bell would be a lot more fun if people could have unlisted melodies. (I am certain that when the ER Chronicle staff the value of the U.S. dollar is shrinking at Although home and abroad, with enough money you can buy almost anything imaginable. Oh, you may feel some things are just priceless and invaluable. Not so, according to establishments such as Sakowitz and Nieman-Mareu- s perhaps the two best specialist proprieters. They claim that one may buy "his wife's weight in carat diamonds for $750,000," "a private circus performance under the big top" and a "feature dinner with famous people" for a price. Sakowitz recently advertised Walter Cronkite as a dinner "item." Upon discovering he was on its guest menu, he was quite steamed. He called Sakowitz and demanded that he be eliminated from the list of sellable guests and told the management he would have no part of their "You can have dinner with Walter Cronkite for X bucks-plus- " scheme. Although Cronkite could have sued for damages, he didn't want to. However, he warned them to remove him from the menu tic-tac-t- e - management thinks of that, there will be an additional monthly whopper charge, similar to the usual miserly fees thev now feature. Neiman-Marcu- s has two Utah gifts in the catalogue this season. "His" and "hers" safety deposit boxes, described as "natural," are unique gifts for your friends with valuable art collections or rare books. The natural deposit boxes are secured in Utah's own Wasatch Mountains in a vault and are priced at $90,000 on a 50-ye- ar lease. Utah's Institute of Familv Research, through Neiman-Marcuoffers any erson his own "Roots." for $5,000. Alex Haley will wiite a K'isn.ilii.i. wiiginal forward in the front of the leather-Unuibook. The researchers will go back as far as K.ihle. To quote a Neiman-Marcu- s "as far back as when vour representative, relatives were washed up on the shoie." Russian Ivnx coats are a casual $150,000. Desk lovers can buy a Wooien desk made of natural wood for Queen Victoria. Wooien is the Rolls Royce of s. d Full-lengt- h desks, for and 150.000. it can Ik- - chess-playin- immediately. Tom Snyder, host of the Tomorrow show, featured d inventors of gifts for Christmas and holiday yule. Already hot on the market, for kids and adults, is Bob and Holly Doyle's "Merlin." The Doyles both have doctorates in astronomy. They found it was difficult to acquire jobs in their field, let alone find employment in the same geographic area together. They decided to delve into the field of artificial intelligence games, via iff' t adult-oriente- V , , f computer. "Merlin" is a computer who challenges you to as well as masters black jack, hidden number games and sundry other games. "Merlin" can be programmed to play melodies from Beethovan's Fifth Symphony to a Bicycle Built For Two. "Merlin's abilities are based on the programmer. He can play what you want to play, as well as beat you," said Bob. When one loses to Merlin, a raspberry-typ- e sound goes off. When you beat Merlin, you hear the sound of a race track starting gate. "When we develop it further, instead of sounds, someday Merlin will be able to encourage or discourage the player orally," added - U - vv K v Jftti.A ft, t. JJ . tic-tac-t- H ! 1 V- - s " " V V V ,- -( ' t , . complicated Transitions from machines to computers have usually "scared adults," Holly winced. "We are usually recipients of nasty notices from computers who send out unpaid bill notices and we, as an adult society, resent them. Mistakes are made by computers but one has to remember that someone programmed that computer. Children are fascinated by "Merlin," and are having fun with computer-typ- e games. Computers scare a lot more . . .features "buck-passin- g language-distortio- g, by memos, phantom clerks, power plays and actually four ways to win. Once you achieve the position of director of the bureaucracy, landing on the Lottery Square (which gets you out of the game), getting the goods and getting too "drunk and disinterested to play," can all make you the winner. d Thirty pages of regulations accompany 200 and only games were made for sale.' "RedTape" Whatever your preferences this Christmas, the markets lor an all out holiday are in full swing. Inventiveness is the order of the day. Name it, pay for it and you got it! f Bob vours. "Boris" is a computerized machine which chess fans will love. For $400. you can set the level of expertise to your liking . . .from novice to expert. "Boris" will say "g(xxi move" when you move well and "got ya now" when you move into a trap. Came lovers can buy "Othello" by Gabriel which computerizes chess, checkers and backgammon into one game. "Class Struggle" is the first Marxist game on the market, invented by Bertell Holmati, a New York University professor of Political Science and Sociology. It "depicts what society is really like today," says Holman. The object of the game is to play as a worker or a capitalist, and obstacles like me buieaturaty tan lead to nuclear war, which ends the game immediately by blowing up the world. Assets and debits replace money, and the board is like Monojxly, with players moving clockwise. "Square 81" is the deadly nuclear square, to be avoided at all costs. Similar games such as "Bureaucracy," by National Distributors is a simple game . . .the first one who moves, loses. "The RedTape Game ' by Bruce Spit is so life-size- v SALT LAKE'S LEADING GOURMET KITCHEN STORE WE HAVE EVERYTHING FOR YOUR HOLIDAY COOKING AND GIFT GIVING t Cookware Teas & coffees Baking supplies Cake deco items Cookie cutters , 10u fresh spices Cookbooks Teas & COffees Cutting boards Woks Rosettes Mixing bowls 1000 gadgets in an 1 Y array .s Vr, jeweled q)KDEAILI1A antique J Xj I Vclciscnne-enamel- jjV sold ami Cuisinart Food Processors ON SALE Chicago Cutlery ON SALE Le Creuset Cookware ON SALE Corning Souffle Sets ON SALE gi Zw.4tlisc. (322-42- 0 n Mil limit $t;ll' . site V nun . V silver I J |