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Brady's book and the international tournament may well stimulate interest in Monopoly marathons, which have often erupted on college campuses. In an endurance test in Denver last summer, 34 students set a record by playing continuously for 41 nights and 42 days. When University of Pittsburgh players ran out of play money during a 161-hour marathon, Parker obligingly delivered $1 million worth of new scrip by plane and Brink's armored car. To allow a group of Massachusetts scuba buffs to play under water, the company devised a waterproof set; the game lasted 11 hours. One of the more bizarre marathons occurred at Torrance, Calif., where twelve enthusiasts had their ups and downs in a Holiday Inn elevator for 148 hours.
The farthest-out tournament of all may some day take place in space. Parker has already built two astronaut sets with aluminum houses and hotels and noncombustible paper supplied by NASA. The sets could accompany the closely confined and womanless crew the U.S. may send on a two-year mission to Mars before the end of the century. That would enable the Mars astronauts to engage in the longest-established, permanent floating space game in history. Says Bluffton College Psychology Professor (and Monopoly Fan) William J. Beausay: "All men have to have a strong motivator to compensate for loss of sex for two years." The board, no doubt, will be redesigned to take note of such choice Martian real estate as Elysium, Electris, Hellas and Nix Olympica.