A Nod to text-adventures and Unix CLI;<p>In Gemini running in browser : If you type the word "XYZZY" into the input field as the first "word" of your prompt, hitting enter or clicking to send the prompt results in literally nothing happening. The entirety of the text remains in the input box. Try it for yourselves it's an interesting case of nothing at all.<p>After some research, I discovered that "XYZZY" is a magic word from the classic text adventure game "Adventure" (Colossal Cave Adventure). It was also adopted as a placeholder term in Unix systems.<p>Some mathematicians and computer scientists believe that "XYZZY" predates its use in "Adventure." They suggest it was a mnemonic used to remember the cyclic nature of the subscripts in the cross-product formula.<p>The creator of "Adventure," Will Crowther, claimed he made up the word randomly. However, he was a mathematician, and it's possible he subconsciously drew inspiration from the existing mnemonic.<p><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xyzzy>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xyzzy_(computing)>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure><p>I suspect Google devs probably intentionally included this as a reference for those familiar with these historical tidbits.<p>It took me a fair bit of research to post this as an easter egg, as - having typed the command randomly myself* - I legitimately thought there was some strange linting or other security related issue going on.<p>Has anyone else discovered this Easter egg or other hidden command type features in Gemini or other chatbots.<p>*and i am not a mathematician.