transcription, транскрипция: [ /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 <b><a href="#Easter%20egg">Easter egg</a></b> 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 has 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 seems to be gone in the 32-bit (Windows 98 and later) versions.