Counterfeit Monkey — 201 of 292

Chapter 2 - The Homonym Paddle

[The original homonym paddle is never wielded by the player; access to it is entirely controlled via requests to the bartender at the Fleur d'Or drinks club. This is only partly to limit the player's options. It's also, narratively, to establish the restricted nature of powerful letter tools, and to create occasions for more engagement with other characters (since a lot of this sequence involves essentially secret manipulations of the synthesizer in the seminar room).

We do write a few of the routines to be more general-purpose, however, because a homonym function also becomes available in the workshop during the very end of the game.]

The homonym paddle is carried by the bartender. The description is "Who had the idea of hitting things to make them swap with their homonyms, I couldn't guess. Nonetheless the toy [--] shaped like a ping-pong paddle and formed of coral-col[our]ed rubber [--] enjoyed a brief vogue in the 80s.

To prevent theft, the paddle is attached to the bartender's wrist by a thin steel cable and bracelet."

To homonym-paddle (N - a thing):

move the N to the repository;

let X be the player;

if N is:

-- a screwdriver:

let X be the screwdriver-drink;

-- a gimlet:

let X be the gimlet-drink;

-- a rusty nail:

let X be the rusty-nail-drink;

unless X is the player:

record "getting a product of the homonym paddle" as achieved;

move the X to the dor-bar-top;

have the parser notice X;

now X does not proffer X;

now N proffers X;

say "[one of]The bartender fishes around in the toolkit for [a N] and sets it on the bar with a flourish. [The patron] is watching this transaction in an interested way.

'This is good,' says the bartender, winking at us both (all?). 'You'll like this.' She raises the homonym paddle unnecessarily high in the air and smashes it down hard on [the N].

There's a crackling discharge of purple-toned lightning, and in place of [the N], a cocktail of the same name now sits on the bar. A few of the customers applaud.[or]'Right,' she says. She reaches into the toolkit for [the N]. 'This will be even better than last time,' she says. Then she tosses [the N] in the air and hits it with the paddle as though serving underhand at ping-pong.

Incredibly, the resulting cocktail glass winds up perfectly balanced on the paddle rather than flying into the wall, which is what would happen if I tried the same thing.

She grins at us and sets the glass down neatly on the bar.[or]This time she lays the paddle down on the bar and drops [the N] onto its surface. The purple lightning-ball obscures [the N] for a moment, then recedes to reveal the cocktail.[stopping]";

To decide what thing is the homonym-match of (target - a thing):

let old text be indexed text;

let old text be "[target]";

let old text be "[old text in lower case]";

let new text be indexed text;

repeat with item running through things in the repository:

if the hash code of the item is the hash code of target:

let new text be "[item]";

let new text be "[new text in lower case]";

if new text is old text:

if the description of the item is not the description of the target:

decide on item;

decide on player.