Old MS Word Easter Egg?
February 27, 2013 1:16 PM Subscribe
I dimly recall a MS Word dictionary (or thesaurus) Easter Egg (I think) that I stumbled upon in college a million years ago. Does it ring a bell with any of you?
In my freshman year of college (93-94), whatever version of Word I used on Mac System 7 had an Easter Egg (I think) in the dictionary or thesaurus. I want to say that if you typed "Bill Gates" the recommended spelling was a two-word phrase along the lines of "obstreperous Lissajous." "Lissajous" was definitely in there, as far as I can recall, though I don't remember the other word.
Does this ring a bell with anyone else?
In my freshman year of college (93-94), whatever version of Word I used on Mac System 7 had an Easter Egg (I think) in the dictionary or thesaurus. I want to say that if you typed "Bill Gates" the recommended spelling was a two-word phrase along the lines of "obstreperous Lissajous." "Lissajous" was definitely in there, as far as I can recall, though I don't remember the other word.
Does this ring a bell with anyone else?
As I recall if you typed in something like "I'd like to see Hillary Clinton be president" and you asked for thesaurus, it would say, "I'll drink to that!"
As is noted in the link Leon provided.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:25 PM on February 27, 2013 [1 favorite]
As is noted in the link Leon provided.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:25 PM on February 27, 2013 [1 favorite]
Pretty much every version of office in the late 90s had an easter egg; there was one truly stupendous one that put a flight simulator into Excel 97.
I, um, have my name in the MS Office 98 for Mac easter egg. If I remember correctly, as this was far too many years ago when I was a young software engineer, to activate the egg you docked the toolbar to the top of the screen, then the left, then the bottom, then the right, and released it to the top again. Then in the office assistant (aka Clippy!) you would type "think different? think office" --I think. I'm not sure on the last word of that phrase.
I was a college intern working on Mac Office for a summer; one of my favorite memories from that internship was asking my mentor the first day if it was OK if I wore some of my Apple developer t-shirts to the office- this was in the days when Apple was getting trounced by Microsoft and as a 19 year old I wasn't so sure about how OK it would be to wear Apple branded shirts around the Redmond campus. He was very cool with it, so I walked around Redmond that whole summer wearing Apple "think different", MacWorld & Code Warrior t-shirts.
Anyway, I thankfully saved a screenshot of the easter egg years ago, because I certainly don't have any computers that could run the software anymore. Clippy would read out a little poem in the bottom right of the screen which I wish I'd written down because it was truly awful nerd humor.
I've heard rumors that after the awesomeness of the flight simulator easter egg they were banned, which is lame. Thankfully lots of websites have taken up the practice now.
posted by lyra4 at 3:09 PM on February 27, 2013 [1 favorite]
I, um, have my name in the MS Office 98 for Mac easter egg. If I remember correctly, as this was far too many years ago when I was a young software engineer, to activate the egg you docked the toolbar to the top of the screen, then the left, then the bottom, then the right, and released it to the top again. Then in the office assistant (aka Clippy!) you would type "think different? think office" --I think. I'm not sure on the last word of that phrase.
I was a college intern working on Mac Office for a summer; one of my favorite memories from that internship was asking my mentor the first day if it was OK if I wore some of my Apple developer t-shirts to the office- this was in the days when Apple was getting trounced by Microsoft and as a 19 year old I wasn't so sure about how OK it would be to wear Apple branded shirts around the Redmond campus. He was very cool with it, so I walked around Redmond that whole summer wearing Apple "think different", MacWorld & Code Warrior t-shirts.
Anyway, I thankfully saved a screenshot of the easter egg years ago, because I certainly don't have any computers that could run the software anymore. Clippy would read out a little poem in the bottom right of the screen which I wish I'd written down because it was truly awful nerd humor.
I've heard rumors that after the awesomeness of the flight simulator easter egg they were banned, which is lame. Thankfully lots of websites have taken up the practice now.
posted by lyra4 at 3:09 PM on February 27, 2013 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks all--does anyone actually remember this particular Easter egg? I've looked for the "Lissajous" but I haven't seen it reproduced anywhere.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 5:14 AM on February 28, 2013
posted by Admiral Haddock at 5:14 AM on February 28, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Leon at 1:21 PM on February 27, 2013