Date   : Sun, 29 Jul 2018 12:58:25 +0100
From   : famrowland@... (Andrew Rowland)
Subject: Developing Tray

Has anyone got, or can point me to, a copy of Tray? It was an 
educational program developed originally by Rob Moy, but there were 
various versions over the years. I think SEMERC was the first publisher. 
There was an Infant Tray version too. Some variants were called 
Developing Tray, and I think a BBC micro version was written by Roger 
(??) Blamires (?). More recently Topologika had Sherlock, and 2Simple 
had a version that doesn't seem to be on sale any more 
(https://www.2simple.com/product/developing-tray) -- I'm not surprised. 
When I spoke to them at a show a few years ago, it wasn't selling. But 
ideally, I'd like to peek again at one of the original ones for the Beeb 
and would need something I can run in an emulator rather than an actual 
disc.

I have searched all the likely places I can find, i.e. stairway to hell, 
bbcmicro.co.uk and others without success. Perhaps when the Educational 
Archive on bbcmicro.co.uk goes live... With the demise of Topologika and 
2Simple giving up on it, it appears there isn't a copy to be had 
anywhere. I used to have it on several discs, but I handed my collection 
over to someone else to look after, can't remember who. Perhaps David 
Moore can?

By the way, the program was a kind of game where a short text was 
presented with all or most of the letters replaced by dashes. Players 
could 'buy' letters and make guesses using clues like word length, 
punctuation and letters already revealed, slowly revealing the text. If 
it is no longer available, I might like to create a version for modern 
computers as a sort of mini-project (if I ever have time) and would like 
to refresh my memory of the details.

Cheers,
Andrew