New From The Lab--A Trifling, Yet Thrilling Amusement For Pocket Billiards Devotees.

The employees at the Super Fun Adventure Quest Time's Laboratory work tirelessly to bring forth new inventions to the world. But for all of their technical and scientific prowess they are inept at shooting pool.

As kind employers, solicitous of the well-being of our staff, Einida and I procured a pocket billiards table for the Recreation Wing of our Lab, but over the course of several evenings we noticed our staffers rather making a mess of things.

We noticed that a simple game of "Eight Ball," which actually requires fifteen balls, was taking not minutes but rather an eternity to play. What should have been the cause of lighthearted merriment was a laborious and frustrating bore.

The staffers really did not know how to shoot pool, and the perceptive Einida concluded that their chief difficulty was in a lack of hand-eye coordination.

One night, as I watched the staffers fumbling and smashing about with their cues, I thought, "Perhaps there are simply too many balls on the table, that sinking fifteen is beyond the skill levels of the participants....So how many balls could I remove from the table and still have a game to play?"

I knew that the game of "Nine Ball" actually uses nine balls, that players try to knock the balls into the pockets in numerical order. So, when the game starts, all the players are trying to shoot the #1 ball into the pocket.  And so on to #2, #3, and so forth.

And so I started experimenting by playing "Six Ball," but that also took too long. "Five Ball" was an abomination of irregularity.

The answer, so simple, yet so complex, was found in the beauty of even numbers. Therefore, I present to the world, "Four Ball." It has the same rules as "Nine Ball," but it only uses four balls.

I quickly contacted Professor Bellanger K. Shahhat, Esq, the master of carpentry and wood-working, who was only too happy to set to work making the world's first "Four Ball" pool ball rack.

In a twinkling, he presented us with a breathtaking and wondrous piece of billiard apparatus, diamond-shaped, primarily fashioned from tropically-grown and stunningly beautiful purple-heart wood, but with contrasts provided by wood of a lighter hue. All in all, it was an exquisite piece of craftsmanship, as the adjoining photograph will show.

When I introduced the Lab staff to "Four Ball," they all clapped in delight, but when I produced the world's only "Four Ball" rack, they gasped in astonishment.

The staffers fell upon the pool table with joy unalloyed. And now, at close of day, after hours of honest scientific toil, they fill the air of the Recreation Wing with the clacking of balls and the shouts of hearty good cheer that result from the observant and intelligent matching of player to game.