And which, over time, became blank pages again…
Dammit, what was I supposed to do with that fish!!!
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Still have my packaged copy of Zork Trilogy for MS-DOS in my bookshelf with the rest of my “classic literature” (filed in-between a gilt-edged complete Sherlock Holmes and a gilt-edged completed HP Lovecraft), 3.5" and 5.25" floppies and bronze Zorkmid still intact. 
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I actually think it might be the pre-Infocom version- I’ve never played the mainframe version, but I just found a “brick of clay” in the attic of the house.
I remember that as being plastic explosive used in Zork II, but I’ve never seen it in Zork I. So I’m kind of thrown for a loop.
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A hollow voice says “plugh”.
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I think I always just said odysseyus, and saved myself the inventory slot.
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I’m trying to draw a map and remember how tough it is.
The trick is to draw a box for the room you’re in, and then draw the lines showing each exit.
When you go OUT an exit, you can draw the next box you show up in- but you can’t make an assumption about what side of that destination box you will go out of to get back to the original.
I think my practice was to draw the boxes in ink, and all the tenative exit stubs in ink.
Then a pencil to connect me to the next room in a ‘straight line’, and draw that box with all the exit stubs.
When you finally figure out what exit stub will get you back to the original source, you can start to connect it.
And then you get pissed off when you run out of room and your grid doesn’t align with a completely non-physical/linear world and you can’t fit in any more rooms in a way that is aesthetically pleasing.
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Obligatory. Jason Scott’s ‘Get Lamp’ documentary on text adventure games. Creative Commons Licensed to boot. Sadly out of print so not buyable. For awhile they even sold with collectible coins.
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I was quite proud of myself when I managed to solve the infamous Babel fish puzzle without any external help, but after wandering around the Heart of Gold trying to mash undifferentiated doodads together I eventually gave up. Must take another whack at it someday.
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A few years back I wrote a history of ZORK for mentalfloss.com:
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Classic Game Postmortem: Infocom’s Zork
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Get Frotz for the iPhone. It can interpret the z5 files that can be found in the dank recesses of the Internet and allow you to play Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, or any of the other Infocom games on the bus.
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Good read, nice work, thanks for sharing!
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Not to mention hundreds if not thousands of amateur products released yearly. Adventure Gaming is not dead. It’s just been pushed out of the realm of commercial viability.
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I once had a dream of being eaten by a grue.
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