In computing, Xyzzy is sometimes used as a metasyntactic variable or as a video game cheat code. Xyzzy comes from the Colossal Cave Adventure computer game, where it is the "magic word".xyzzy in the Jargon File.
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Xyzzy by itself would print the status of the last "xyzzy on" or "xyzzy off" command. When booting a Cr-48 from developer mode, when the screen displays the "sad laptop" image, pressing xyzzy produces a joke BSOD screen. According to Brantley Coile, the Cisco PIX firewall had a xyzzy command that simply said "Nothing happens." He also put the command into the Coraid VSX to escape the CLI and get into the shell.
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In Minecraft, xyzzy is one of the random words that appear under the enchantments on an enchanting table (written in the Standard Galactic Alphabet). Pretend You're Xyzzy is an unofficial online version of the party game Cards Against Humanity.
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Gmail lists XYZZY as a capability when connected via IMAP before logging in. It takes no arguments, and responds with "OK Nothing happens." The Hewlett-Packard 9836A computer with HPL 2.0 programming language has XYZZY built into the HPL language itself with the result of "I see no cave here." when used. The same message is returned from HP 3458A and HP 3245A instruments when queried with XYZZY via the HPIB bus.
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"Xyzzy" is a magic word that teleports the player between two locations ("inside building" and the "debris room"). Entering the command from other locations produces the disappointing response "Nothing happens." As an in-joke tribute to Adventure, many later computer programs (not only games but also applications) include a hidden "xyzzy" command – the results of which range from the humorous to the straightforward. Crowther stated that for its purpose in the game, "magic words should look queer, and yet somehow be pronounceable", leading him to select "xyzzy".
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In most versions of the Ingres dbms, "select xyzzy()" returns "Nothing happens." However, "select xyzzy('wim')" returns "Nothing happens to Wim". The xyzzy() function has been part of the Ingres product since at least version 5 (late 1980s), but was removed from the main codeline sometime in the early 2000s. While talking to one of the members of the Ingres development team, Wim de Boer, at that time the secretary of the Ingres Users Group Nederland (IUGN), mentioned the removal of this Easter egg.
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In 2016, operation of the competition was taken over by the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. The competition differs from the XYZZY Awards, as authors must specifically submit games to the Interactive Fiction Competition, but all games released in the past year are eligible for the XYZZY Awards. Many games win awards in both competitions.
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Modern usage is primarily from one of the earliest computer games, Colossal Cave Adventure, in which the idea is to explore a cave with many rooms, collecting the treasures found there. By typing "xyzzy" at the appropriate time, the player could move instantly between two otherwise distant points. As Colossal Cave Adventure was both one of the first adventure games and one of the first interactive fiction pieces, hundreds of later interactive fiction games included responses to the command "xyzzy" in tribute. A web page giving responses to "xyzzy" in many games of interactive fiction.
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The command commonly produces a humorous response in other Infocom games and text adventures, leading to its usage in the title of the interactive fiction competition, the XYZZY Awards. In Hugo's House of Horrors, typing xyzzy gives the message "We are getting desperate, aren't we!". In Dungeons and Dragons Online, Xy'zzy is the nigh-invulnerable raid boss in the Hound of Xoriat adventure. In the PC version of the popular Electronic Arts game Road Rash, the cheat mode is enabled by typing the key string "xyzzy" in the middle of the race.
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He is the author of numerous works of interactive fiction, including Lost New York, which was nominated for an XYZZY Award in 1996.
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In Primordia, one is able to get a bonus short scene featuring a shout-out to Colossal Cave Adventure as a form of non-playable text-adventure, which is accessible by typing 'xyzzy' in Memorious's data-kiosk. In the video game Deus Ex, protagonist JC Denton is trying to make contact with the Mole People, and when their representative, Curly, prompts for a password to reveal the Mole People's hideout, Denton tries "xyzzy" if the password has not been obtained by him beforehand. Curly denies this attempt, as one would expect. Andrew Sega released an album under the name XYZZY.
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The origin of the word "xyzzy" has been the subject of debate. According to Rick Adams, the sequence of letters "XYZZY" has been used as a mnemonic to remember the process for computing cross products. Crowther, author of Colossal Cave Adventure, states that he was unaware of the mnemonic, and that he "made it up from whole cloth" when writing the game.
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Luminous Horizon placed first in the 10th Interactive Fiction Competition in 2004 and was nominated for Best Individual PC and Best NPCs in the 2004 XYZZY Awards.
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The Edifice is a 1997 work of interactive fiction by Lucian P. Smith about the evolution of an early anthropoid in stone-age times. It is distributed in z-code format as freeware. The game won the 1997 Interactive Fiction Competition, and went on to also win that year's XYZZY Award for Best Puzzles and XYZZY Award for Best Individual Puzzle. It gained plaudits for its famous "language puzzle".
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Xyzzy has been implemented as an undocumented no-op command on several operating systems; in the 16-bit version of Data General's AOS, for example, it would typically respond "Nothing happens", just as the game did if the magic was invoked at the wrong spot or before a player had performed the action that enabled the word. The 32-bit version, AOS/VS, would respond "Twice as much happens". On several computer systems from Sun Microsystems, the command "xyzzy" is used to enter the interactive shell of the U-Boot bootloader. Early versions of Zenith Z-DOS (a re-branded variant of MS-DOS 1.25) had the command "xyzzy" which took a parameter of "on" or "off".
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The player is challenged not just to solve character-specific puzzles, but to understand the logic behind the changes of character. The game was the first ever to win both the Interactive Fiction Competition (taking first place out of fifty-one entries in 2001) and the XYZZY Award for Best Game. It also received the XYZZY Awards for Best Story and Best Setting. The Electronic Literature Organization anthologised All Roads in the first volume of its Electronic Literature Collection.
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XYZZY Ranks Top Text Adventures For 2005. GameSetWatch. 28 March 2006. They have recognized a wide variety of games, and are seen by many as a contrast to the Interactive Fiction Competition, which favors short works and uses a different structure for judging and voting. Together with awards like the Interactive Fiction Competition, the XYZZY Awards provide opportunities for the community to encourage and reward the creation and development of new works within a genre that is no longer commercially lucrative.
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For example, if there was a file called S0103.XYZZY in account $TSOS, and there was an account on that system named S0103, any user wanting to access it would have to access it as "$TSOS.S0103.XYZZY". TSOS was also the "default" account for a file that was referenced that did not exist locally. For example, to execute the EDT editor program, one would issue the command to run a program, EXEC, followed by the name of the file, which was called EDT.
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Davidson, Drew. Well played 1.0: video games, value and meaning. ETC Press. 2009. The name of the awards comes from the magic word "xyzzy" causing teleportation from the popular early text adventure game Adventure.
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Within the low-traffic Usenet newsgroup alt.xyzzy, the word is used for test messages, to which other readers (if there are any) customarily respond, "Nothing happens" as a note that the test message was successfully received. In the Internet Relay Chat client mIRC and Pidgin, entering the undocumented command "/xyzzy" will display the response "Nothing happens". The string "xyzzy" is also used internally by mIRC as the hard-coded master encryption key that is used to decrypt over 20 sensitive strings from within the mirc.
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XYZZY News – The Magazine for Interactive Fiction Enthusiasts. Issue No. 4. July/August 1995. The term "interactive fiction" is sometimes used also to refer to visual novels, a type of interactive narrative software popular in Japan.
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Vespers is an interactive fiction game written in 2005 by Jason Devlin that placed first at the 2005 Interactive Fiction Competition. It also won the XYZZY Awards for Best Game, Best NPCs, Best Setting, and Best Writing.
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This is a list of XYZZY Awards results, grouped by award rather than year. The XYZZY Awards are the annual awards given by the publication "XYZZYnews" to works of interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards for film. The awards were inaugurated in 1997, initially with eight categories: best game, best writing, best story, best setting, best puzzles, best individual puzzle, best NPCs (non-player characters) and best individual NPC. Two others, best individual player-character and best use of medium, were added the following year.
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Magic words are also used as Easter eggs or cheats in computer games, other software, and operating systems (For example, the words xyzzy, plugh, and plover were magic words in the classic computer adventure game Colossal Cave Adventure).
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The XYZZY Awards are an event to recognize extraordinary interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards or Grammy Awards but for a far smaller community. The XYZZY Awards have been presented yearly in the early spring since 1996 by Eileen Mullin, the editor of XYZZYnews. Any game released during the year prior to the award ceremony is eligible for nomination to receive an award. The decision process takes place in two stages: members of the interactive fiction community nominate works within specific categories in the winter, and sufficiently supported nominations become finalists within those categories.
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Anchorhead was hailed by critics and players as one of the best interactive fiction games available due to its complex and intricate backstory and well-written dialogue and descriptions. In the 1998 XYZZY Awards, Anchorhead received the award for Best Setting, and was also nominated for Best Game.
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Typically there are four or five finalists in each category. Community members then vote among the finalists, and the game receiving a plurality of votes is given the award in an online ceremony at ifMUD. Since 1996 the XYZZY Awards have become one of the most important events within the interactive fiction community.Carless, Simon.
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Unauthorized Termination is a 2006 work of interactive fiction written by Richard Otter about a senior investigator given a murder enquiry that is not everything it appears to be. It is written in ADRIFT 4 and came 10th in the 2006 annual Interactive Fiction Competition. Unauthorized Termination was also a Nominee in the 2006 XYZZY Awards for Best Settings.
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Galatea is an interactive fiction video game by Emily Short featuring a modern rendition of the Greek myth of Galatea, the sculpture of a woman which gained life. It took "Best of Show" in the 2000 IF Art ShowMontfort, Nick. Galatea. nickm.com. Accessed 23 December 2012. and won a XYZZY Award for Best Non- Player Character.
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" Interactive fiction (IF) writer Emily Short critiqued it as "a very short Twine piece" that "plays with agency not in the usual ways [...] explores the idea of surface agency as a distraction." In 2013, Rat Chaos character New Rat City won the XYZZY Award for Best Individual NPC in 2012. Jenni Polodna reviewed the character with "New Rat City is a personal statement.
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Floatpoint is a 2006 work of interactive fiction written by Emily Short about a diplomat sent to an endangered colony to discuss evacuation options and terms of cohabitation. It is written in Inform 7 and won the 2006 annual Interactive Fiction Competition. Floatpoint also won 2006 XYZZY Awards for Best Settings and Best NPCs. The game was generally praised for its use of multiple endings.
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Lost Pig is a comedic work of interactive fiction about an orc retrieving an escaped pig. It was created by Admiral Jota and released as freeware. It took first place in the 2007 Interactive Fiction Competition with an average score of 8.27. Lost Pig won best game, best writing, best individual non-player character, and best individual player character in the 2007 XYZZY Awards.
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Slouching Towards Bedlam is an interactive fiction game that won the first place in the 2003 Interactive Fiction Competition. It is a collaboration between American authors Daniel Ravipinto and Star Foster. Slouching Towards Bedlam was finalist for eight 2003 XYZZY Awards, winning four: Best Game, Setting, Story, and Individual NPC (for the protagonist's cybernetic assistant, Triage). The game takes place in a steampunk Victorian era setting.
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Violet took 35.1% of the vote in the Jay Is Games audience award, compared to 18.7% for the second-place winner, Lost Pig. Violet won four awards in the 2008 XYZZY Awards: Best game, writing, individual puzzle ("Disconnecting the Internet in Violet/Getting rid of the key in Violet"), and individual NPC (Violet, the eponymous character). The protagonist of Violet is a graduate student trying to write 1,000 words for his dissertation.
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Hunter, in Darkness is a 1999 interactive fiction game by Andrew Plotkin, written in Inform. It won the "Best Individual Puzzle" and "Best Setting" categories in the 1999 XYZZY Awards, and came in eighth overall in the 1999 Interactive Fiction Competition. The game is inspired by Gregory Yob's seminal 1972 computer game Hunt the Wumpus. As in Hunt the Wumpus, the player's goal is to locate and defeat the title beast within its cave.
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As of 2011, he was working on a dark electropop side-project with Julia Beyer (Chandeen, Technoir). In 2012 Sega and Dan Clark from Stromkern teamed up under the name The Mighty Chouffe and released an EP, The West Town. In 2013 he released Obelus, the debut album from his new side-project XYZZY. In 2020, Sega and Alex Virlios (Blue Images, CTRL, Exit) formed Hallowed Hearts and released their debut album into the fire.
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I-0 is a piece of anonymous interactive fiction about the adventures of a teenage girl hitch-hiking on an Interstate Highway (in this case the nonexistent Interstate 0). It won the Best Game and Best Individual Player Character awards at the 1997 Xyzzy Awards, and was a finalist for six other categories. The game was generally praised for its branching plot structure and multiple puzzle solutions. The game is available freely online.
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Metasyntactic variables used commonly across all programming languages include foobar, foo, bar, baz, qux, quux, quuz, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, and thud; several of these words are references to the game Colossal Cave Adventure. Wibble, wobble, wubble, and flob are also used in the UK.wibble. (n.d.). Jargon File 4.4.7. Retrieved February 23, 2010, from A complete reference can be found in a MIT Press book titled The Hacker's Dictionary.
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Porpentine's 2012 Twine game Howling Dogs incorporates themes of escapism, violence and religious experience, though she has stated that it should be open to interpretation. She created Howling Dogs shortly after she started hormone-replacement therapy in 2012, in only seven days, while staying in a friend's remodeled barn. It won the 2012 XYZZY awards in the "Best story" and "Best writing" categories. The Boston Phoenix listed it as one of their "Top 5 indie games of 2012".
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All Roads is a 2001 interactive fiction game by Jon Ingold that placed first at the 2001 Interactive Fiction Competition. It also won the XYZZY Awards for Best Game, Best Setting and Best Story and was nominated for Best Individual Puzzle and Best Writing. The game is story-oriented and features few puzzles, though in a sense is one big puzzle, since the player's goal is to decipher the meaning of the game after completing it.
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The Dreamhold is an interactive fiction game by Andrew Plotkin released in 2004. Its primary purpose is to be a tutorial to IF, and because of that the "core" of the game is relatively easy to finish. As an attempt to make it more appealing for seasoned IF players, Plotkin added an "expert mode", which can be activated early in the game and makes certain puzzles harder. It won the 2004 XYZZY Awards for Best Puzzles and Best Use of Medium.
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A number of Short's works have won acclaim at the XYZZY Awards, an annual popular-choice award for interactive fiction. Her work has been described by reviewers in terms that range from "mesmerizing" to "frustrating". Her 2003 work City of Secrets was originally commissioned by a San Francisco synth-pop band, but after they left the project, she completed it on her own. While many of Short's early games were written in Inform, she later experimented with a variety of formats.
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While Robinett's message in Adventure led to the use of the phrase Easter egg, Easter eggs were included in previous video games. The first text adventure game, Colossal Cave Adventure (1976), from which Adventure was fashioned, included several secret words. One of these was "xyzzy", a command which enabled the player to move between two points in the game world. In 2004, an Easter egg displaying programmer Bradley Reid-Selth's surname was found in Video Whizball (1978), a game for the Fairchild Channel F system.
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Instead of entering commands, the player selects one of the words from the text, and the scene is altered - often subtly, for example, an addition of a few words or a shift in atmosphere. There are multiple paths along the narrative, and several endings ranging in mood. The Space Under the Window was a finalist in the 1997 XYZZY Awards for Best Use of Medium and Best Writing. It has inspired parodies such as The Chicken Under The Window by Lucian P. Smith, at ChickenComp 1998.
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The phrase is the namesake of an interactive fiction game called The Gostak, written by Carl Muckenhoupt. Most of the text of the game is in an entirely unknown language (fundamentally English in syntax and grammar, but with much of the vocabulary and even idiomatic constructions changed) which the player must decipher, not only to understand the game's text but also to type commands in the same language. For example, the game opens with the following text: The Gostak won the 2001 XYZZY Awards for Best Use of Medium and Best Individual Puzzle.
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Barlow was active in the interactive fiction scene of the late 1990s, most notably releasing the game Aisle in 1999. It won the XYZZY Award for Best Use of Medium. Like his later Silent Hill games, Aisle features a psychologically damaged viewpoint character, a contemporary setting and a positive meaning at its heart. In March 2016, during the Game Developers Conference, Barlow announced he had joined the interactive media firm Interlude, later rebranded as Eko, to help them develop an interactive media reboot of the 1983 film WarGames.
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16-bit AOS applications ran natively under AOS/VS and AOS/VS II on the 32-bit Eclipse MV line. AOS/VS (Advanced Operating System/Virtual Storage) was the most commonly used DG software product, and included a command-line interpreter (CLI) allowing for complex scripting, DUMP/LOAD, and other custom components. The 16-bit version of the CLI is famous for including an Easter egg taken directly from the Colossal Cave Adventure game. A user typing in the command "xyzzy" would get back a response from the CLI of "Nothing Happens".
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Earth and Sky is an interactive fiction trilogy written and produced by American author Paul O'Brian about the adventures of a brother and sister who gain superpowers while searching for their lost parents. Games in the series have won awards in the annual Interactive Fiction Competition and received an XYZZY Award. The first game begins a month after the disappearance of two scientists at the local university, Clair and Scott Colborn. After exploring their parents' lab, the playable character, Emily Colborn, and her brother Austin find that their parents had been developing suits that grant sky-themed and earth-themed superpowers.
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Jon Ingold (born 1981) is a British author of interactive fiction and co- founder of inkle, where he co-directed 80 Days. His interactive fiction has frequently been nominated for XYZZY Awards and has won on multiple occasions, including Best Game, Best Story and Best Setting awards for All Roads in 2001. Ingold's works are notable for their attention to the levels of knowledge that the player and player character have of the in-game situation, with the effect often depending on a player who understands more than the character or vice versa. Ingold has also written a number of plays, short stories and novels.
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Savoir-Faire is a piece of interactive fiction written by Emily Short, about a magician in 18th-century France searching his aristocratic adoptive father's house. It won the Best Game, Best Story, Best Individual Player Character and Best Puzzles awards at the 2002 Xyzzy Awards, and was a finalist for four other categories. Puzzles in the game require the player to make "leap[s] of inference" between objects with similar functions. The game was generally praised for its unique use of magical powers (based on weaving links between similar objects, so that anything that happens to one happens to both) and its high-quality implementation.
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Competitions such as the annual Interactive Fiction Competition for short works, the Spring Thing for longer works, and the XYZZY Awards, further helped to improve the quality and complexity of the games. Modern games go much further than the original "Adventure" style, improving upon Infocom games, which relied extensively on puzzle solving, and to a lesser extent on communication with non-player characters, to include experimentation with writing and story-telling techniques. While the majority of modern interactive fiction that is developed is distributed for free, there are some commercial endeavors. In 1998, Michael Berlyn, a former Implementor at Infocom, started a new game company, Cascade Mountain Publishing, whose goals were to publish interactive fiction.
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