29 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
29 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
xyzzy
|
|
|
|
/XYZZY/ , /XYzizee/ , /zizee/ , /ikzizee/ , adj. [from the ADVENT game] The
|
|
canonical magic word. This comes from ADVENT , in which the idea is to
|
|
explore an underground cave with many rooms and to collect the treasures you
|
|
find there. If you type xyzzy at the appropriate time, you can move
|
|
instantly between two otherwise distant points. If, therefore, you encounter
|
|
some bit of magic , you might remark on this quite succinctly by saying
|
|
simply Xyzzy! Ordinarily you can't look at someone else's screen if he has
|
|
protected it, but if you type quadruple-bucky-clear the system will let you
|
|
do it anyway. Xyzzy! It's traditional for xyzzy to be an Easter egg in games
|
|
with text interfaces. Xyzzy has actually been implemented as an undocumented
|
|
no-op command on several OSes; in Data General's AOS/VS, for example, it
|
|
would typically respond Nothing happens , just as ADVENT did if the magic
|
|
was invoked at the wrong spot or before a player had performed the action
|
|
that enabled the word. In more recent 32-bit versions, by the way, AOS/VS
|
|
responds Twice as much happens. Early versions of the popular minesweeper
|
|
game under Microsoft Windows had a cheat mode triggered by the command xyzzy
|
|
enter right-shift that turns the top-left pixel of the screen different
|
|
colors depending on whether or not the cursor is over a bomb. This feature
|
|
temporarily disappeared in Windows 98, but reappeared in Windows 2000. The
|
|
following passage from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum,
|
|
suggesting a possible pre-ADVENT origin, has recently come to light: Ziz-zy,
|
|
zuz-zy, zik! said Dorothy, who was now standing on both feet. This ended the
|
|
saying of the charm, and they heard a great chattering and flapping of
|
|
wings, as the band of Winged Monkeys flew up to them. The text can be viewed
|
|
at Project Gutenberg.
|
|
|