Xyzzy
Encyclopedia
Xyzzy is a magic word
from the Colossal Cave Adventure
computer game.
In computing
, the word is sometimes used as a metasyntactic variable
or as a video game cheat code, the canonical "magic word". In mathematics
, the word is used as a mnemonic
for the cross product.
, in which the idea is to explore an underground 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 the first adventure game
and the first interactive fiction
, hundreds of later interactive fiction games included responses to the command "xyzzy" in tribute.
The origin of the word has been the subject of debate. Rick Adams pointed out that the mnemonic "XYZZY" has long been taught by math teachers to remember the process for performing cross product
s (as a mnemonic that lists the order of subscripts to be multiplied first). 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.
s; in 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". Xyzzy by itself would print the status of the last "xyzzy on" or "xyzzy off" command.
The popular Minesweeper
game under older versions of Microsoft Windows
had a cheat mode triggered by entering the comment xyzzy, then pressing the key sequence shift
and then enter
, which turned a single pixel in the top-left corner of the entire screen into a small black or white dot depending on whether or not the mouse pointer is over a mine. This easter egg
was present in all Windows versions through Windows XP Service Pack 2, but under Windows 95, 98 and NT 4.0 the pixel was visible only if the standard Explorer desktop was not running. The easter egg does not exist in Windows XP SP3 and later versions of Windows.
The low-traffic Usenet
newsgroup alt.xyzzy 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. .
A "deluxe chatting program
" for DIGITAL
's VAX/VMS
written by David Bolen in 1987 and distributed via BITNET
took the name xyzzy. It enabled users on the same system or on linked DECnet
nodes to communicate via text in real time. There was a compatible program with the same name for IBM
's VM/CMS
.
Xyzzy was the inspiration for the name of the interactive fiction
competition the XYZZY Awards.
xYzZY is used as the default boundary marker by the Perl
HTTP::Message module for multipart MIME
messages, and was used in Apple's AtEase for workgroups as the default administrator password in the 1990s.
In the game, Zork
, typing xyzzy and pressing enter produces the response: A hollow voice says "fool."
When booting a Cr-48 from developer mode, when the screen displays the "sad laptop" image, pressing xyzzy produces a joke BSOD
screen.
The indie game Minecraft
includes a "xyzzy" enchantment for tools and weapons, although it is currently unknown as to what effect it has.
The bike racing game Road Rash
required the sequence "xyzzy" in order to activate the cheat mode.
Magic word
Magic words are words which have a specific, and sometimes unintended, effect. They are often nonsense phrases used in fantasy fiction or by stage prestidigitators. Certain comic book heroes use magic words to activate their super powers. Magic words are also used as Easter eggs or cheats in...
from the Colossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure gave its name to the computer adventure game genre . It was originally designed by Will Crowther, a programmer and caving enthusiast who based the layout on part of the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky...
computer game.
In computing
Computing
Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...
, the word is sometimes used as a metasyntactic variable
Metasyntactic variable
In computer science, programmers use metasyntactic variables to describe a placeholder name or an alias term commonly used to denote the subject matter under discussion or an arbitrary member of a class of things under discussion...
or as a video game cheat code, the canonical "magic word". In mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
, the word is used as a mnemonic
Mnemonic
A mnemonic , or mnemonic device, is any learning technique that aids memory. To improve long term memory, mnemonic systems are used to make memorization easier. Commonly encountered mnemonics are often verbal, such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person remember something,...
for the cross product.
Origin
Modern usage derives primarily from one of the earliest computer games, Colossal Cave AdventureColossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure gave its name to the computer adventure game genre . It was originally designed by Will Crowther, a programmer and caving enthusiast who based the layout on part of the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky...
, in which the idea is to explore an underground 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 the first adventure game
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
and the first interactive fiction
Interactive fiction
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
, hundreds of later interactive fiction games included responses to the command "xyzzy" in tribute.
The origin of the word has been the subject of debate. Rick Adams pointed out that the mnemonic "XYZZY" has long been taught by math teachers to remember the process for performing cross product
Cross product
In mathematics, the cross product, vector product, or Gibbs vector product is a binary operation on two vectors in three-dimensional space. It results in a vector which is perpendicular to both of the vectors being multiplied and normal to the plane containing them...
s (as a mnemonic that lists the order of subscripts to be multiplied first). 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.
Uses
Xyzzy has actually been implemented as an undocumented no-op command on several operating systemOperating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s; in 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
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
, the command "xyzzy" is used to enter the interactive shell of the u-boot bootloader. Early versions of Zenith Z-DOS
Z-DOS
Z-DOS was a version of Microsofts generic MS-DOS specifically written to run on the hardware of the Zenith Z-100 personal computer.The Z-100 used a 8086-family microprocessor, but otherwise had a completely different internal architecture than the IBM PC.At the time Microsofts MS-DOS wasn't...
(a re-branded variant of MS-DOS 1.25) had the command "xyzzy" which took a parameter of "on" or "off". Xyzzy by itself would print the status of the last "xyzzy on" or "xyzzy off" command.
The popular Minesweeper
Minesweeper (Windows)
Windows Minesweeper is a variant of the computer game Minesweeper, created by Curt Johnson, originally for OS/2, and ported to Microsoft Windows by Robert Donner, both Microsoft employees at the time...
game under older versions of Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
had a cheat mode triggered by entering the comment xyzzy, then pressing the key sequence shift
Shift key
The shift key is a modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper" characters. There are typically two shift keys, on the left and right sides of the row below the home row...
and then enter
Enter key
In computer keyboards, the enter key in most cases causes a command line, window form, or dialog box to operate its default function...
, which turned a single pixel in the top-left corner of the entire screen into a small black or white dot depending on whether or not the mouse pointer is over a mine. This easter egg
Easter egg (media)
Image:Carl Oswald Rostosky - Zwei Kaninchen und ein Igel 1861.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Example of Easter egg hidden within imagerect 467 383 539 434 desc none...
was present in all Windows versions through Windows XP Service Pack 2, but under Windows 95, 98 and NT 4.0 the pixel was visible only if the standard Explorer desktop was not running. The easter egg does not exist in Windows XP SP3 and later versions of Windows.
The low-traffic Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
newsgroup alt.xyzzy 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. .
A "deluxe chatting program
Talker
A talker is a chat system that people use to talk to each other over the Internet. Dating back to the 1980s, they were a predecessor of instant messaging....
" for DIGITAL
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
's VAX/VMS
OpenVMS
OpenVMS , previously known as VAX-11/VMS, VAX/VMS or VMS, is a computer server operating system that runs on VAX, Alpha and Itanium-based families of computers. Contrary to what its name suggests, OpenVMS is not open source software; however, the source listings are available for purchase...
written by David Bolen in 1987 and distributed via BITNET
BITNET
BITNET was a cooperative USA university network founded in 1981 by Ira Fuchs at the City University of New York and Greydon Freeman at Yale University...
took the name xyzzy. It enabled users on the same system or on linked DECnet
DECnet
DECnet is a suite of network protocols created by Digital Equipment Corporation, originally released in 1975 in order to connect two PDP-11 minicomputers. It evolved into one of the first peer-to-peer network architectures, thus transforming DEC into a networking powerhouse in the 1980s...
nodes to communicate via text in real time. There was a compatible program with the same name for IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
's VM/CMS
VM (operating system)
VM refers to a family of IBM virtual machine operating systems used on IBM mainframes System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z and compatible systems, including the Hercules emulator for personal computers. The first version, released in 1972, was VM/370, or officially Virtual Machine Facility/370...
.
Xyzzy was the inspiration for the name of the interactive fiction
Interactive fiction
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
competition the XYZZY Awards.
xYzZY is used as the default boundary marker by the Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
HTTP::Message module for multipart MIME
MIME
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions is an Internet standard that extends the format of email to support:* Text in character sets other than ASCII* Non-text attachments* Message bodies with multiple parts...
messages, and was used in Apple's AtEase for workgroups as the default administrator password in the 1990s.
In the game, Zork
Zork
Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language...
, typing xyzzy and pressing enter produces the response: A hollow voice says "fool."
When booting a Cr-48 from developer mode, when the screen displays the "sad laptop" image, pressing xyzzy produces a joke BSOD
BSoD
BSoD is an initialism. It may stand for:* Blue Screen of Death* Black Screen of Death...
screen.
The indie game Minecraft
Minecraft
Minecraft is a sandbox-building independent video game written in Java originally by Swedish creator Markus "Notch" Persson and now by his company, Mojang, formed from the proceeds of the game. It was released as an alpha on May 17, 2009, with a beta version on December 20, 2010...
includes a "xyzzy" enchantment for tools and weapons, although it is currently unknown as to what effect it has.
The bike racing game Road Rash
Road Rash
Road Rash is the name of a motorcycle-racing video game series by Electronic Arts, in which the player participates in violent illegal street races. The game was originally released for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, but was ported to several other systems. Six different games were released from...
required the sequence "xyzzy" in order to activate the cheat mode.