Scorecard

TAKE IT

The New York Jets, like other professional teams, solve the problem of finding temporary housing for their athletes by asking viewers and listeners to supply leads. Here is the reply to one such request:

"I just received permission from my parents to write you that we can have two or three N.Y. Jets stay at our house for the season.... It doesn't matter who you send, but my mother would prefer Joe Namath, my dad would like Rich Caster and my dog and I would like the Flea, Eddie Bell....

"My mother is a good cook, my father is a good handyman and I'm a good football player, so I can help them practice in the yard."

Sounds too good to turn down.

THE SHARK HAS PRETTY EARS, DEAR

An effective shark repellent has eluded marine scientists for years. Poisons were a flop and attacks on the brutish marauders' sense of smell rated no better than a passing sniff. But now there is some reason to hope that sound and music, which in the past have been used to attract sharks, may shoo them away.

Theo Brown, an Australian whose book describing his life with sharks will be published next spring by Little, Brown & Co., found that he became the instant life of a shark party when he played the even rhythms of waltzes underwater. Fox trots were popular, too, but when he spun a Beatles tune for a White Shark it was Tootsie, Goodby. The fish exploded in a frenzy and sped off, never to return.

Another who has been working on sharks' auricular preferences is Arthur Myrberg of the University of Miami. He has discovered certain low-frequency sounds that both attract and repel them. Further study, he feels, might refine the sounds into components that either attract or repel but do not do both. The Beatles' Help! may be the very thing.