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The Murky Origins of Zork's Name

Posted by Soulskill on from the murky-enough-for-a-grue dept.

mjn writes "Computational media researcher Nick Montfort traces the murky origins of Zork's name. It's well known that the word was used in MIT hacker jargon around that time, but how did it get there? Candidates are the term 'zorch' from late 1950s DIY electronics slang, the use of the term as a placeholder in some early 1970s textbooks, the typo a QWERTY user would get if he typed 'work' on an AZERTY keyboard, and several uses in obscure sci-fi. No solid answers so far, though, as there are problems with many of the possible explanations that would have made MIT hackers unlikely to have run across them at the right time."

7 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Trivia by FreshKarma · · Score: 5, Funny

    You have been eaten by a grueling day at work.

    --
    The future ain't what it used to be.
  2. Nethack by smitty97 · · Score: 3, Funny

    The oracle asks for a donation of 1000 zorkmids to ponder your question..

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    mod me funny
    1. Re:Nethack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      The Oracle scornfully takes all your money and says:

      "it is rather disconcerting to be confronted with the following theorem from [Baker, Gill, and Solovay, 1975].

      Theorem 7.18 There exist recursive languages and B such that

      (1) P(A) == NP(A), and
      (2) P(B) != NP(B)

      This provides impressive evidence that the techniques that are currently available will not suffice for proving that P != NP or that P == NP." [Garey and Johnson, p. 185.]

  3. Re:Trivia by husker_man · · Score: 4, Funny

    You have been eaten by a grueling day at work.

    These jokes are getting a little twisty on me. All alike.

  4. Re:Trivia by The+Yuckinator · · Score: 2, Funny

    You see a seedy looking heckler carrying a large bag.

  5. Parallel invention? by Besjon · · Score: 2, Funny

    As a kid in the early '80s, I created my own space marine/spy/superhero character and drew a comic book of one of his adventures: lots of spaceships and weapons and a sinister villain as part of a class project. I named him Zork because I was fascinated by the letter Z (I was a huge Zorro fan growing up) and the combination with the letter K sounded strong. I had big hopes of making him into a toy product line, Saturday morning cartoon, and a series of choose your own adventure books. Oh well...

  6. Re:It is pitch black. by amiga3D · · Score: 3, Funny

    Hmm....reminds me of the movie Pitch Black. I wonder if the writers ever played Zork?