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, 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 products (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.
Read more about this topic: Xyzzy
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by, the power that makes and forever re-creates man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
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