Stones is a board game which has the potential to drive you to utter despair as you try to anticipate where your final stone will land. The board, which is displayed on screen throughout each game, consists of eight pairs of cups, yours lined up against your opponent's. At the start, each cup contains an equal number of stones (from one - not too hard on the grey matter - to six - impossible). To move, you specify one of the pairs of cups, the stones in that cup are taken out and distributed one at a time in cups going anticlockwise around the board.

To score, your last stone has to land in an empty cup and you score points equivalent to the number of stones in your opponent's cup opposite that empty cup - otherwise, movement around the board continues with your last stone plus those in the cup your last stone reached begin distributed anticlockwise, and so on.

You can pay against a human opponent, or against the computer (playing as the 'Great Gronk' or 'Zig' or 'Jeremy the Jiving Giraffe' or some such other unlikely character). Luckily, the computer does not seem to well up on strategy and is readily beaten providing you play with only a few stones in each cup so as not to confuse yourself unduly.

The ZX81 keeps score perfectly. Indeed, this game is well suited to a computer - it could be very difficult to keep track of moves and scores otherwise. Not so with Open Patience on the B side of this cassette. This is a simulation of the card game of that name, which I think I would prefer to play with a real pack of cards. The display is good, but why play a game such as this using a computer, except maybe to prevent cheating? Technically, the game performed well and does not permit illegal moves.

The pack of cards is displayed laid out face upwards in eight columns. The object is to get the cards onto the suit stacks in ascending order. You can select either four or five discard stacks. The lack of playing card figures in the ZX81 character set is as always a disadvantage in card game simulations, but I had no problems reading the display notation adopted by Geoff Lee.

Both games worked well and had adequate on-screen instructions. They require 16K RAM and take about six minute to load.

Stones and Open Patience costs £4.50 from Geoff Lee, 5 Westbourne Road, Islington, London N7.