The Clue of the Broken Needle's Zork-Inspired Cross-Stitch Hides a Glowing Warning Message

Pseudonymous cross-stitcher Sprinkles, of The Clue of the Broken Needle, has designed a pattern inspired by Infocom's classic Zork interactive fiction title — with a hidden message picked out in glow-in-the-dark thread.

"This. Is my pride and joy," Sprinkles writes of the design. "A gift for my dad, who played Zork with me when I was a kid, and with his dad when he was a kid. I designed this pattern myself and had a great time puzzling out how to hide the glow in the dark letters!"

First released in 1977 for the Digital PDP-10 mainframe, as an expanded homage to Will Crowther's seminal 1976 interactive fiction title Colossal Cave Adventure, Zork became a smash hit for the company set up to commercialize it: Infocom, the most recognizable name in interactive fiction.

Released, in its original form, as a purely text-based game without graphics, Zork's personal computer ports were best-sellers — and gamers of a certain vintage will well remember the white house and its mailbox, visible from the game's starting location.

Sprinkles' cross-stitch pattern visualizes the location, known in the game as "West of House," complete with its boarded-up door preventing the player from entering the building in a traditional fashion. Turn the lights off, though, and there's a hidden secret which will be even more familiar to Zork players: a warning about wandering in the dark.

"It is pitch black," the hidden message picked out in glow-in-the-dark thread reads, cleverly concealed among the white bricks of the building. "You are likely to be eaten by a Grue."

For those with the patience for cross-stitch and a love of interactive fiction, Sprinkles is selling the pattern and floss key for $8 on Gumroad — though you'll be signing yourself up for a finger-stretching 4,083 total stitches to finish the project.