All about Zork

Later tonight I'll post the latest assignments, and maybe also start reading project proposals. But first, since I see it's generating some frustration ... Zork in bullet points.

• In Zork, your goal is to collect treasure. There are 20 different treasures: some are easy to find, some are very difficult. To get full credit for a treasure, it needs to be placed in the trophy case inside the house.
• As a couple people have posted, you do need to make a map to make any progress. Here's how you do it: you draw a square for each room. Possible directions include north, south, east, west, north-west, north-east, south-west, south-east, up and down. Here's the ugly part: if you go west from location A to get to location B, going east from location B will not necessarily get you back to location A. Therefore an accurate map can be quite a challenge to create.
• Yes, this was actually our idea of fun back in the 80s. Some people still think it's fun - but it peculiarities are bound to frustrate you. If something doesn't work and it seems like it should, try rewording it: some commands need to be worded precisely.
• Remember, if you want to download it and play it on your own computer, google for "zork 1" and download the data file, which you can open with frotz or winfrotz. If you have a windows machine, just google for winfrotz. For linux it's even easier; e.g., in Debian & derivatives just type "apt-get install frotz" at a command prompt.