Nord & Bert Couldn’t Make Head Or Tail Of It is the first instance of a small tradition of wordplay IF: see http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag:wordplay for some other examples. But, as already mentioned, the most direct influence on Monkey is the T-remover from Leather Goddesses of Phobos; Emily was re-implementing it as an example for the I7 manual, and the example… kind of grew.