Good Manners Required to Get Ahead in This New Board Game

Suddenly manners are in .

The manners market runneth over with books, newspaper columns, lectures and corporate seminars.

And now “The Official Game of Etiquette: For the Young, For the Upwardly Mobile and Those Who Are Tired of Faking It.” Invented by Frank Scott, a former child actor (Disney’s “The Seeing Eye Dog”) turned stockbroker and now owner of Interstate Security, a San Diego burglar-alarm company.

It’s a Monopoly derivative. It tests your etiquette I.Q. with such questions as:

- At a clam bar, is it acceptable to suck the clam right off the shell? Yes .

- Because of history and the Pilgrims, is corn on the cob, although messy, still acceptable at a formal dinner? No. Not unless you’re eating with a Pilgrim.

- Is the most important servant in the household the a) oldest, b) chambermaid, c) butler, d) gardener or e) valet? Answer: e, the butler.

- A masseur at a private club should be tipped what percentage of the massage: 10, 15 or 20? Answer: 20.

- When eating stewed prunes in public, your pit should be first dropped into your a) plate, b) hand, c) spoon or d) napkin? Answer: c, your spoon. Then deposited on the edge of your plate.

Scott, 37, researched his 400 questions with standard reference works on etiquette and with Diane Diehl, a Newport Beach consultant who preaches etiquette to the corporate elite.

The game sells for $24 (manners ain’t cheap, bud) and is available at Nordstrom or by mail order through Smart Start (P.O. Box 175, San Diego 92126). Scott invested $40,000 getting the game produced and marketed.

“All those latchkey kids from the 1960s and 1970s are the yuppies of today, and they realize they don’t know how to act in most social and business situations,” Scott said. “They need this game, even if they don’t know it yet.”

Far-Off Fund-Raiser Enriches Killea

Lest you think the Killea-Bentley race was just a local affair: Brooklyn Dist. Atty. Elizabeth Holtzman held a fund-raiser for Lucy Killea on Sunday at the apartment of actress Blythe Danner on Manhattan’s swank Upper East Side.

Killea talked to the gathering by speaker phone.

Among those in attendance were Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, author Marilyn French (“A Woman’s Room”), actress Lori Singer (“Footloose”), film maker Joan Micklin Silver (“Crossing Delancey”), and former New York City Council President Carol Bellamy.

About $7,000 was raised. Holtzman met Killea when she was in New York for the Donahue show.

Jean’s Struggle Touches Public

The losing struggle of Jean, the Asian elephant, provoked more public response than any animal in the history of the Wild Animal Park, even the much-anticipated California condor hatchlings.

Zoo officials are determined to write personal replies to the 50 people who wrote letters and the nearly 100 who telephoned during the weeks before Jean’s death Friday.

Many of the calls and letters contained offers of professional assistance and home remedies: antibiotics, castor oil, physical therapy.

Half a dozen bouquets arrived. A woman from London wrote to suggest the use of herbs. An elementary school class from Del Mar wrote to tell Jean not to despair.

Jean developed a massive infection after undergoing a Cesarean to remove a dead fetus.

Hopes for an Asian elephant to give birth at the Wild Animal Park have shifted to 20-year-old Connie, who is pregnant by Ranchipur and set to deliver in August.

Look for park officials to have a nervous summer. Until a super-strength sonogram is invented, an elephant pregnancy in captivity is heavy with uncertainty.