[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.