It was soon clear that nothing did, Mary-Ann-wise. Although she brightened when my partner said he had gone to Harvard (“We once had another very bright contestant; not only was he a graduate of Harvard,” and here she paused meaningfully, “but he also worked for BBDO.”), I could offer no such gimmick. With the delicate deliberation of a huntress hot on the track of the biggest game of all, Mary Ann asked then if the two of us were “friends.” When we denied this canard, she abandoned her clipboard in perceptible disgust.
It was about this time when I first asked Mary Ann how to play the game. (So far were we from having the answers that we did not even have the rules.)
“It couldn’t be simpler,” she said suspiciously. “There’s nothing to it.”
My partner assured her that we would doubtless catch on, but would, nonetheless, appreciate some sketchy information.
Mary Ann glanced furtively at her watch and began edging toward the set. “You arrived late, you know.” “The game,” I repeated. “What is it.”
“You’ve certainly watched it,” she said, with an air of settling the question for once and all. Although we denied it, there was no convincing Mary Ann, who was by then conveying the distinct impression that she would, if pressed further, take the Fifth. She handed me a folding chair, put one finger to her lips (it was Magic Time), and we spent the next fifteen minutes watching the Champions (an affable army sergeant and a radio and television performer, equally affable, named John Reed King) down the Challengers, on grounds which eluded me. I decided that it had perhaps been an affability contest.
It was fortunate that my partner employed those fifteen minutes more constructively, because before you could have said Here’s-Barbara-Britton-for-Revlon (unhappily for Double Cross, you couldn’t have), there we were, introduced to Greater New York as a couple of advertising copywriters, a biographical note which was in my case inaccurate. Before I could stall for time by correcting it, however, we had plunged on into the game, whatever the game was. Representing, spuriously or no, the great wordplay tradition of Bruce Barton and Raymond Rubicam, I glanced at the monitor, watched myself smirk fatuously, and failed to identify a five-letter word meaning Huckster.
