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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Out-Geeking O-Dub

Out-Geeking O-Dub

by John Cole|  February 16, 20045:11 pm| 15 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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Oliver asks:

Without using Google, can anyone tell me what the following numbers signify?

007 373 5963

I can outgeek you one better, Oliver, taking things back to the late 70’s and early 80’s, when I worked on a dummy terminal hooked up to a campuswide Pr1me mainframe. Here is your question:

“What do the terms Xyzzy, Plugh, and Plover come from and what do they mean?”

For bonus points, tell me what the maximum score of the game was, and if you really want to go all out, tell me what the Pirate said when he robbed you in the maze. How do you recover the items stolen by the Pirate?

If you can answer those, you are eligible for the nerd Hall of Fame.

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15Comments

  1. 1.

    Oliver

    February 16, 2004 at 5:24 pm

    I have no clue. Sounds like a science-based Carmen San Diego type game I used to play though.

  2. 2.

    andy

    February 16, 2004 at 6:00 pm

    I know it’s Adventure, but i never got into it enough to make it very far :P

    I know that xyzzy, plugh, and plover are the magic words you use to transport around the caves and wellhouse, though, but that’s about it :o)

  3. 3.

    andy

    February 16, 2004 at 6:01 pm

    xyzzy is also prominent in the minesweeper cheat for Windows (and about a billion other things), but that’s much newer :P

  4. 4.

    Francis W. Porretto

    February 16, 2004 at 6:26 pm

    “Plugh” was a sound made by “a hollow voice” in Adventure’s Colossal Cave. If the player said it, it would transport him to another cave, though which one has slipped from my memory. “An emerald the size of a plover’s egg” was located in another part of the Cave, and “Plover” was another teleportation word to bring you to that cave.

    I must admit that “xyzzy” escapes my recall.

    To get back items stolen by the Pirate, you had to locate his treasure chest, which, if memory serves, was hidden in “a maze of twisty little passages, all different.”

  5. 5.

    Francis W. Porretto

    February 16, 2004 at 6:27 pm

    Oh, and the maximum score in the original version of the game was 350 points. “All the world hails you, Adventurer! Grandmaster! To reach the next higher level would be a neat trick!”

  6. 6.

    Kathy K

    February 16, 2004 at 7:44 pm

    Adventure.
    I think Xyzzy takes you to another cave.
    Sheesh. You expect us to remember that long ago?
    I have trouble remembering “a maze of twisty little passages, all alike” (from a later, and far more well known, game).

  7. 7.

    Gary and the Samoyeds

    February 16, 2004 at 8:06 pm

    XYZZY took you from the Building to … um … Dusty Rock Room?

    PLUGH took you from there to Y2. There was a hollow voice that said it in that room.

    PLOVER took you from Y2 to the room with the Plover’s Egg (I think it was an emerald).

    The Pirate said two different things depending on whether you had any treasures on you.

    If you DIDN’T have any, he was carrying a chest and said something like “I’ve been spotted! I’ll hide me chest deep in the maze where no one will find it.”

    If you DID have some, he would steal them and say he was hiding THEM (he didn’t have the chest) in the maze.

    In either case, he hid the stuff in the maze that had the passages all alike. (The maze with the passages all different had a sign that said “this is not where the Pirate hides his treasure.”)

    I legitimately only got 349 points. I later found out to get the last one you have to move some magazines or something.

  8. 8.

    Punctilious

    February 16, 2004 at 10:10 pm

    Oh no. I knew I scored high on the geek quiz, but this is really rubbing it in. I was geeked when I got it on a floppy (five and a quarter that is) and could put it in my 20 pound Tandy laptop and play at home instead of on the mainframe.

  9. 9.

    physics geek

    February 16, 2004 at 10:16 pm

    “attack dragon”
    With what, your bare hands?
    “yes”
    Congratulations. You’ve just killed a fierce green dragon with your bare hands. Amazing, isn’t it?

    Or

    “attack bear”
    With what, your bare hands?
    “yes”
    You bare hands against his bear hands?

    It wasn’t until later that I found out how to get that 350th point. I was playing on a campus mainframe in the summer of 1979 and managed to get a printout of the source code and cross reference library the day before I left for home on some lovely green and white computer paper. Finally managed to deduce the last point after I got home.
    Sick, isn’t it?

  10. 10.

    Tatterdemalian

    February 17, 2004 at 5:13 pm

    I hated that dragon. Every time I played the game I would blow the sucker to smithereens at least once.

    Anyone played “Secret Mission?” Talk about frustrating… even if you did everything perfect, you had a one-in-three chance of getting killed at the very end.

  11. 11.

    Steverino

    February 17, 2004 at 10:40 pm

    “Water….water”

    If you have treasure when the pirate meets up with you, I think the pirate says, “Har, har! I’ll just grab this booty and hide it in my chest deep in the maze.”

    And it’s the “all alike” maze, not the “all different” one.

    Dropping your copy of Spelunker Today when you are at Witt’s End gives you one point. That’s where many people fail to achieve a perfect score.

    I saw the Fortran source to Adventure once, and the comments were a joy to read.

  12. 12.

    Tatterdemalian

    February 18, 2004 at 9:20 am

    Oops, wrong Adventure. I was thinking of the “Adventure” game for the Vic-20.

    Uhm… what system was this Adventure game for?

  13. 13.

    Pitts

    February 21, 2004 at 1:59 pm

    Man, that takes me back to the days of “Zork” on the C-64. Seems kind of silly these days that a computer game could consist entirely of typing and reading text, but I spent hours playing that thing…

  14. 14.

    Me

    March 18, 2004 at 12:29 pm

    Code to Mike Tyson in MTPO.
    Nice eh?
    even better
    PMPN
    U2DT
    VRBV
    USYZ

    Code to get to dracula on Castelvania 2.

    Oh and
    41111 111111
    11111 111111

    Actually works in Metal Gear

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    February 17, 2004 at 9:19 am

    The Letter of the Day

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