A marker that attention is needed. Commonly used in program
comments to indicate areas that are kluged up or need to be. Some
hackers liken `XXX' to the notional heavy-porn movie rating.
Compare FIXME.
Node:xyzzy, Next:YA-, Previous:XXX,
Up:= X =
xyzzy /X-Y-Z-Z-Y/, /X-Y-ziz'ee/, /ziz'ee/, or
/ik-ziz'ee/ adj.
[from the ADVENT game] The canonical `magic word'. This comes from
ADVENT, 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!" It's traditional for xyzzy to be an Easter egg in games with text
interfaces.
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".
Early versions of the popular `minesweeper' game under
Microsoft Windows had a cheat mode triggered by the command
`xyzzy<enter><right-shift>' that turns the top-left
pixel of the screen different colors depending on whether or not
the cursor is over a bomb. This feature temporarily diasappeared
in Windows 98, but reappeared in Windows 2000.
The following passage from "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" by L.
Frank Baum, suggesting a possible pre-ADVENT origin, has recently
come to light:
"Ziz-zy, zuz-zy, zik!" said Dorothy, who was now standing on
both feet. This ended the saying of the charm, and they heard a
great chattering and flapping of wings, as the band of Winged
Monkeys flew up to them.