Xyzzy

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.

Origin

Modern usage derives primarily from one of the earliest computer games, Colossal Cave Adventure, in which the idea is to explore an underground cave with many rooms and to collect the treasures you find there. By typing "xyzzy" at the appropriate time, the player could move instantly between two otherwise distant points. Hundreds of later interactive fiction games contain responses to the command "xyzzy" as a tribute to Colossal Cave Adventure. More recent games have shown a trend of increasingly more elaborate and in-jokey responses.

The origin of the word has been the subject of debate. While one common story is that Crowther "made it up from whole cloth" when writing the game, Rick Adams points out that the mnemonic "XYZZY" has long been taught by math teachers to remember the process for performing cross products (as a mnemonic that lists the order of subscripts to be multiplied first).

The XYZZY Awards are presented annually by XYZZYnews editor Eileen Mullin to notable works of interactive fiction.

Uses

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 the game 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, AOS/VS responds “Twice as much happens”.

The popular Minesweeper game under Microsoft Windows has a cheat mode triggered by the command ‘xyzzy[then]’ that turns the top-left pixel of the screen into a small black dot depending on whether or not the cursor is over a mine. This feature is present in all versions, but under Windows 95, 98 and NT 4.0 the pixel is only visible if the standard Explorer desktop is not running.

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.

The Google IMAP service advertises a strange CAPABILITY called XYZZY when you issue the CAPABILITY command. If the command XYZZY is given, the server responds "OK Nothing happens."

In mIRC, entering the command /xyzzy will display the response "Nothing happens".

In the game Kingdom of Loathing, xyzzy is one of several passwords, one of which unlocks a secret event for each player in one of the game's adventure areas.

XYZZY was a popular interactive chat program for VAX.

In the seminal computer game Zork, typing xyzzy returns "A hollow voice says 'Fool'." Typing xyzzy in 'Zork: The Undiscovered Underground', the 1997 prequel to 'Zork: Grand Inquisitor', returns, "A hollow voice says, 'Cretin.'

Acclaimed science fiction writer Isaac Asimov wrote in his essay "The Relativity of Wrong" that a child who spells "sugar" as "xyzzy" would be wrong, and more wrong than one who spells it "shuger".

In the popular online MMORPG, Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach, Xy'zzy is the name of a raid boss, 'The Hound of Xoriat', added in Module 7.

In the computer game "Road Rash", the command xyzzy enables cheating in the game.

In the Game Boy Color game "Xtreme Sports", entering the players name as "xyzzy" will give you 400 medals if you hold the 'A' button and press 'select' during game play.

In the computer game Diablo II, the command /xyzzy literally does nothing as opposed to any other unusable command giving the feedback "That is not a valid command."