<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.
