COOLER than Monopoly, more exciting than frisbee, less dangerous than D-Day, is the game of "how many clues can we find to prove that Paul McCartney is dead." All kinds of freaks and non-freaks are listening to their Beatle records, analyzing the art work on their Beatle albums, and weaving strange tales of speculation concerning the maybe late Paul.

Rumors about Paul have been around for years, but so have rumors about John, George, Ringo, and Jackie Kennedy. It was on October 12 that the present McCartney craze started, as dozens of death clues were aired on a radio show by Russ Gibbs, a disc jockey for WKNR-FM in Dearborn, Mich. WKNR has been in the forefront of the Paul frenzy since then; last Sunday the station featured two professors, two bigwigs from the record industry, and one astrologer in a two-hour talk show. The talk was about Paul.

The first big article on the deadness of Paul appeared in the University of Michigan Daily on October 14. Fred LaBour, the Daily's music critic and the author of the article, appeared rather confident that Paul has been dead since 1966. He began his story by saying unequivocally, "Paul McCartney was killed in an automobile accident in early November 1966, after leaving EMI recording studios tired, sad, and dejected."

LaBour went on from there to spin a tale of how the Beatles have hoaxed the world since the "accident." "The surviving Beatles decided to keep the information from the public for as long as possible... Lennon's plan was to create a false Paul McCartney, bring him into the group as if nothing had happened, and then slowly release the information of the real Paul's death to the world via clues secreted in record albums."

To pull off the hoax, "a Paul lookalike contest was held and a living substitute found in Scotland... an orphan from Edinburgh named William Campbell... Minor plastic surgery was required to complete the image." Not only did Campbell look amazingly like McCartney, according to LaBour, but "the difference in voice timbre between the original and phony Paul... was so slight" that the Scottish orphan was able to sound the same as Paul.

Campbell, LaBour continued, was allowed to use his real voice on the single "Lady Madonna," which does sound unlike. Paul's usual style. Beatle manager George Martin, meanwhile, became "an important composer, all the while masquerading as Paul."

LaBour left few things untouched by his theory. "Paul was a homosexual... so confused girlfriends were not a major problem for the plotters. Paul rarely saw his only surviving parent anyway, and had had few close friends... Peter Asher's sister Jane was paid a ripe sum to keep her mouth shut and pretend she was Paul's better half." It was Campbell, not McCartney, who married Linda Eastman last summer, he wrote. The fact that the Beatles have not given a concert since 1966 made things less complicated.

IT TURNS OUT that LaBour is not only a poor writer but somewhat of a liar as well. He has admitted that the entire story is a product of his imagination, based only on assorted clues in Beatle songs and on Beatle albums. He has never met "Louise Harrison Caldwell and George Martin's illegitimate daughter Marian," whom he thanked at the beginning of his story "for their help." The account which he put down as the truth was only "a working hypothesis," he now says.

The Michigan Daily's attitude toward the story is interesting. The paper introduced the article by saying, "Mr. LaBour says it's all true." But editorial page editor Steve J. Anzalone said last week that "we're not trying to pass this off as a news story. I don't know how serious Fred was; I hope most people aren't believing it."

Accounts of Paul's death may be only theories, but the clues are real. The clues are strange. The clues are clues. Few besides the Beatles know what they are clues to, but they are clues.

The most blatant, unmistakable clue of all is the weird, distorted voice at the end of "Strawberry Fields Forever," on the Magical Mystery Tour album, which says plainly, "I buried Paul." Another clue that always makes the uninitiated cringe appears on page 23 of the picture section inside the same album: John, George, and Ringo are wearing red carnations in their lapels, Paul a black one.

AFTER THIS, the clues require a certain degree of imagination to perceive and interpret; that, of course, is where the fun comes in. Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, for example, was the first Beatle album released after November, 1966. The cover picture of the album centers around a grave saying "Beatles," beneath which are flowers arranged in a pattern resembling the letter "P" and also resembling a bass guitar. The flowers can be divided into five characters which conceivably read, "PAUL?" Three sticks are laid across these flowers- one, it is obvious (once you get in the right spirit for this sort of thing), for each non-Paul Beatle.

A raised hand behind a head is considered a symbol of death, and of the 60-odd heads on the Sergeant Pepper's front cover, only Paul's lies under a raised hand. The hand behind Paul's head reappears on pages 18 and 24 of the Magical Mystery Tour picture section and on the front cover of the Yellow Submarine album.

Paul is the only Beatle on the back cover of Sergeant Pepper's whose back is facing the viewer, which indicates strongly that the Beatles may be trying to single him out for something. LaBour also mentioned the fact that, in the inside photo of the album, McCartney is wearing, on his left sleeve, a patch reading "O.P.D.," which means "Officially Pronounced Dead," and, on his left breast, a medal awarded to dead British Army heroes. It happens, however, that the "O.P.D." could just as easily be "O.P.P." ("Ontario Provincial Police") and that George is wearing the same Army medal as Paul.

The theme song "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" is the first song on side one of the album, but its reprise is the next-to-last, not the last, song on side two. The only song, then, which is outside the "Sergeant Pepper's" framework is the last song on side two- "A Day in the Life." And it is "A Day in the Life" in which the Beatles sing "about a lucky man" who "blew his mind out in a car." New significance can be lent to the phrase repeated in the song: "I'd love to turn you on."