XYZZY
Scottish Country Dance Instruction
XYZZY (R8x32) 3C (4C set) Sue McKinnell S McKinnells SCDs1- 8 1s lead down the middle and back to face 1st corners
9-12 1s change places with 1st corners RH, 1s change places with opposite person LH while original 1st corners ¾ turn LH to face 2nd corner positions
13-16 Original 1st corners change places RH with 1s (in 2nd corners), corners change places on sides LH while 1s turn LH to end BtoB in middle (L facing up)
17-24 1s dance reels of 3 on own sides (RSh to 3rd corners) ending in 2nd place
25-32 1s dance diagonal R&L. 213
(MINICRIB. Dance crib compiled by Charles Upton, Deeside Caledonian Society, and his successors)
XYZZY 8x32 Reel for 3C by Sue McKinnell
1- 8 1C lead down and up to face 1st corners; 2C step up on bars 3-4.
9-10 1C trade places RH with 1st corners.
11-12 1W and 2W, 1M and 3M trade places LH WHILE 3W and 2M turn LH in the center to end 3W facing 1M, 2M facing 1W.
13-14 1M and 3W, 1W and 2M trade places RH.
15-16 3W and 2W, 3M and 2M trade places LH up and down the set WHILE 1C turn LH to end back-to-back in the center, 1W facing up and 1M facing down.
17-24 RS reels of three on sides, beginning with 1C dancing out the ends of the dance and turning right.
25-32 Diagonal rights and lefts, 1W up and 1M down.
Repeat.
(Dance crib compiled by the deviser, Sue McKinnell, Jul 2001)
Keith Rose's Crib Diagrams
Dance Information
The figures of this dance reminded me of a phrase from the original Adventure game ("You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike").Suggested music is Sleepy Maggie from Something to Celebrate by the Lothian Band.
(Dance information by the deviser, Sue McKinnell)
XYZZY is a magic word from the Colossal Cave Adventure computer game. In computing, the word is sometimes used as a metasyntactic variable or as a video game cheat code, the canonical "magic word".
Modern usage is primarily from one of the earliest computer games, Colossal Cave Adventure, a text adventure game developed originally in 1976 in which the idea is to explore a cave with many rooms, collecting the treasures found there.
By typing "XYZZY" at the appropriate time, the player could move instantly between two otherwise distant points.
As Colossal Cave Adventure was both one of the first adventure games and one of the first interactive fiction pieces, hundreds of later interactive fiction games included responses to the command "XYZZY" in tribute.
The origin of the word "XYZZY" has been the subject of debate. According to Rick Adams, the sequence of letters "XYZZY" has been used as a mnemonic to remember the process for computing cross products. Crowther, author of Colossal Cave Adventure, states that he was unaware of the mnemonic, and that he "made it up from whole cloth" when writing the game.
Colossal Cave Adventure Computer Game On VT100 Terminal, XYZZY
This page uses content under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, along with original copyrighted content and excerpts from Wikipedia and other sources.
Text from this original XYZZY (Computing) article on Wikipedia.
Text from this original Colossal Cave Adventure article on Wikipedia.
Image copyright Autopilot, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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