You are in a maze of twisty little passageways, all alike...
xyzzy is a nick or username that I tend to use all over the place (due to exposure to ADVENT at an early age). As such, if you bump into someone called ‘xyzzy’ out there in cyberspace, it may well be me. Quite probably not, though.
I decided on xyzzy in Oriel Square, Oxford some time in October 1996. I needed a username and was thinking back to playing Colossal Cave on 480Z machines. I hadn’t quite realised how widespread it was though at that point, not having been exposed to the Internet. Despite this knowledge, I still stick with the name mainly because I like it.
ADVENT/Adventure/Colossal Cave helped bring xyzzy into the international consciousness, and it is available for many different systems now thanks to the magic of Interactive Fiction.
xyzzy links:
- The xyzzy entry in the Jargon File
- XYZZYnews can be found at the XYZZYnews page (surprisingly). More concerned with Interactive Fiction generally rather than a single magic word.
- If you're looking for somewhere to play interactive fiction (or even a roguelike, like Angband) hop along to the ChungKuo BBS.
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