[1] : Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)

wumpus /wuhm'ps/ n. the central monster and, in many versions, the
   name of a famous family of very early computer games called "hunt the
   wumpus'. the original was invented in 1970 several years before
   advent by gregory yob. the wumpus lived somewhere in a cave with the
   topology of an dodecahedron's edge/vertex graph later versions
   supported other topologies, including an icosahedron and mo"bius strip.
   the player started somewhere at random in the cave with five `crooked
   arrows'; these could be shot through up to three connected rooms, and
   would kill the wumpus on a hit later versions introduced the wounded
   wumpus, which got very angry. unfortunately for players, the movement
   necessary to map the maze was made hazardous not merely by the wumpus
   which would eat you if you stepped on him but also by bottomless pits
   and colonies of super bats that would pick you up and drop you at a
   random location later versions added `anaerobic termites' that ate
   arrows, bat migrations, and earthquakes that randomly changed pit
   locations.

   this game appears to have been the first to use a non-random
   graph-structured map as opposed to a rectangular grid like the even
   older star trek games. in this respect, as in the dungeon-like setting
   and its terse, amusing messages, it prefigured advent and zork and
   was directly ancestral to the latter zork acknowledged this heritage by
   including a super-bat colony. a c emulation of the original basic game
   is available at the retrocomputing museum,
   `http://www.tuxedo.org/retro'.


see also:
advent zork 

[2] : The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)

wumpus
     
        hunt the wumpus
     
     
see also:
hunt the wumpus 

Wumpus >> W Words
Wumpus, definition of term: Wumpus
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