xyzzy
<games> The canonical "magic word" from the ADVENT adventure game, in
which the idea is to explore an underground cave with many rooms and to collect
the treasures you find there. If you type "xyzzy" at the appropriate time, you
can move instantly between two otherwise distant points. If, therefore, you
encounter some bit of magic, you might remark on this quite succinctly by saying
simply "Xyzzy!" "Ordinarily you can't look at someone else's screen if he has
protected it, but if you type quadruple-bucky-clear the system will let you do
it anyway." "Xyzzy!" 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 ADVENT 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, by the way, AOS/VS responds "Twice as much
happens". See also plugh.
[Jargon File]
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