Sorcerer Parser Frustration

I recently started replaying Infocom's Sorcerer, a game I have probably
not played since the '80s. I quickly ran into the most frustrating
"issue" with the parser. At the very beginning as part of the copy
protection you must unlock a journal. I remembered this vaguely and
thought I knew what I was doing, but for the life of me I could not get
that silly journal opened. It turns out the only input the game will
accept is for the player character to be holding both the journal and
the key and to type "open journal". The standard IF convention of
"unlock <direct object> with <indirect object>" does not work! This
took me an embarrassingly long time to stumble on the correct input.
This is almost worthy of the bug list IMHO.

- Collin

Note the following interchange :

>get journal
Taken.

>open journal
You can't unlock it with your hand.

>rezrov journal
The journal seems to bear a spell protecting it against the simple
rezrov spell.

>get the key
Taken.

>unlock the journal with the key
No spell would help with that!

>unlock the journal
(with the small key)
You must have had a silliness spell cast upon you.

>rezrov the journal
The journal seems to bear a spell protecting it against the simple
rezrov spell.

>open the journal with the key
You must tell me how to do that to a journal.

>open the lock with the key
I can't use the word "lock" here.

>open the journal
(with the key)
The journal springs open.

>

>I recently started replaying Infocom's Sorcerer, a game I have probably
>not played since the '80s. I quickly ran into the most frustrating
>"issue" with the parser. At the very beginning as part of the copy
>protection you must unlock a journal. I remembered this vaguely and
>thought I knew what I was doing, but for the life of me I could not get
>that silly journal opened. It turns out the only input the game will
>accept is for the player character to be holding both the journal and
>the key and to type "open journal". The standard IF convention of
>"unlock <direct object> with <indirect object>" does not work! This
>took me an embarrassingly long time to stumble on the correct input.
>This is almost worthy of the bug list IMHO.


I haven't updated the Bugs List in a long time (though I keep meaning
to). This isn't really a bug as such, just frustrating gameplay.
Nobody's ever made a list of those because Infocom doesn't have too
many of them. But yes, I remember what you're talking about, and it is
a pain.

For me the most frustrating thing about Sorcerer when I first played it
was that I left Guild HQ without sending off for the potion, played the
game almost to the endgame before I realized I needed it, and had to
start the whole thing over from the beginning. Yuck. Still a good
game overall, though.