<!--
	Title: (MULTI-SYSTEM Software) Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It
	Source: Computer Entertainer, v6(6)
	Date: September 1987
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

**NORD AND BERT COULDN'T MAKE HEAD OR TAIL OF IT (NA/⭐⭐⭐⭐)**
is a collection of short stories by Jeff O'Neill for
***<u>Infocom</u>***. In typical Infocom fashion, these are unlike any short stories
you've ever encountered. All eight tales take place in and around the
town of Punster, and each involves some kind of word-play, such as
spoonerisms, cliches, puns, and homonyms. Each story can be completed
in a few hours' time or less, and seven are completely independent
of each other. The eighth, "Meet the Mayor," depends on your
completing the other seven because it utilizes passwords given at the
conclusions of the stories. Unlike other Infocom stories, no mapping
is required because all accessible locations are shown in the status line.
To go to one of the locations, you need only type in its name. And you
won't have to buy an Invisiclues book for NORD AND BERT because
the Invisiclues are right in the program.

## *Caution: Words on the Loose*

For this review, we played one of the stories to its conclusion ("Go to
the Shopping Bizarre") and sampled the others. The Shopping Bizarre
turned out to be a very strange place where our task was to restore order
in a grocery store. It seems that a bunch of homonyms had gotten loose
in the place and come to life. Thus our first encounter on the dessert
aisle was a very large, brown moose. It was a chocolate moose, of
course, and needed only to be reminded that it was a mousse to send it
docilely into the freezer case where it belonged. That store was a
strange place indeed, what with a cereal murderer loose on the
Manicotti Aisle and other assorted crazy goings on. We had breafer
encounters with the cliches in "Buy the Farm," the incredibly dumb
jokes and puns in the 50s-style situation comedy, "Act the Part," the
rooms with personalities in "Manor of Speaking," the food-related
witticisms in "Eat Your Words," the common-root words in "Play
Jacks," and the spoonerisms in "Shake a Tower" (where a "gritty pearl"
is a "pretty girl"). We enjoyed them all.

## *Words and Witticisms*

NORD AND BERT is a feast for lovers of words and witticisms. The
typical Infocom irreverence leavens the mixture of stories, and Jeff
O'Neill's sense of the absurd truly rises to the occasion. If you're
fascinated by words and the improbable combinations of them that we
often take for granted, then you'll love this collection. And since
O'Neill and Infocom have provided us with the first-ever collection of
interactive short stories, we may have the makings of a whole new party
activity. One of these stories would make a wonderful addition to an
evening's entertainment among friends. (Solo play; Keyboard; Blank
disk required for game-saving.) Available for Amiga, 128K Apple II,
Atari ST, IBM, 512K Macintosh; also for Commodore 128 at $34.95.

**Recommended.** (MSR $39.95)
