View source for The Gostak

<table style="width:100%;margin-bottom:1em;clear:both"><tr><td>{{surreal}} {{ifcnth|2001|21st place of 51}} {{xaw2|2001|[[Best Individual Puzzle]] and [[Best Use of Medium]]}}</td></tr>
<tr><td>{{xaf2|2001|[[Best Individual NPC]] and [[Best Puzzles]]}}</td></tr></table>

{{game infobox|title=The Gostak|image=|author=[[Carl Muckenhoupt]]|publisher=n/a|released=Oct-2001|authsystem=[[Inform]] 6.21|platform=[[Z-code]]|language="Gostakian" English|license=Freeware|color=none|graphics=none|sound=none|cruelty=TBD}}

==How It Begins==
You are a gostak rasking your shamtag (which is lelloed). You have pelled from the bewl at here, the delcot of tondam, to distim the doshes, but the doshery lutt is crenned with glauds. You reb some gitches friking in the hoggam, but, oddly, no duscats glake here. You also reb a tophthed curple, a gomway, and a samilen.

You are the gostak. The gostak distims the doshes. But you'll have to discren those glauds first.

(For a jallon, louk JALLON.)

==Notable Features==
* Linguistic background: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gostak "The gostak distims the doshes"] is a linguistic phrase that was invented to show that even if one don't know what the basic words in a sentence mean, one can still derive some meaning from the syntax. English readers do not know what the words ''gostak'', ''distims'' and ''doshes'' mean, but can still infer that a ''gostak'' is a noun, that ''distims'' is a verb in the present tense, and that ''doshes'' is a plural noun whose singular is ''dosh''. More importantly, English readers can also deduce relationships between the terms. For example, a ''gostak'' is something that distims the doshes, ''distimming'' is something that gostaks do to doshes, and a ''dosh'' is something that is distimmed by a gostak.
* The language used in the game is essentially English except most of the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are completely new; this variant of English might be called Gostakian English. (An example of Gostakian Esperanto might be "La gostako maltimmas la do&#x015d;ojn.") Players are forced to do some non-trivial note taking and blind experimentation to try to figure out what the words in Gostakian might mean. Complicating matters is that Gostakian terms might not have any exact equivalant in English, and that the world of the gostak may be completely alien to us.
* The help menus (JALLON) are also in Gostakian English. This provides the player with a large amount of sample text and suggests many of the basic verbs that the player will need. System commands like "save", "restore", "quit", etc. are left in normal English, although their descriptions are in Gostakian. 
* Some of the choices for Gostakian words aren't completely random and might be considered in-jokes. For example, the words ''bal'' and ''da'' (for ''yes'' and ''no'') were used by  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Smullyan Raymond Smullyan] in some of his logic puzzles.
* Several puzzles not directly related to the language issue.

==Versions==
===Version 1===
* ''The Gostak'' (Carl Muckenhoupt; Oct-2001; [[Z-code]]).
** Version info: Release 1 / Serial number 010926 / Inform v6.21 Library 6/10
** [[IF Comp 2001]]: 21st place of 51 games, and winner of the [[Golden Banana of Discord]] (standard deviation: 3.05).
** [[XYZZY Awards 2001]]: Winner for [[Best Individual Puzzle]] (deciphering the language) and [[Best Use of Medium]]. It was also a finalist for [[Best Individual NPC]] (the droke) and [[Best Puzzles]].
** {{ifarchive|games/competition2001/inform/gostak/|gostak.z5}}

===Version 2===
* ''The Gostak'' (Carl Muckenhoupt; [[Z-code]]).
** {{ifarchive|games/zcode/|gostak.z5}}

==Links==
===General Info===
* {{baf game|The Gostak|1670}}
===Reviews===
* {{ifratings game|The Gostak|1627}}
* [http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/g.html#gostak The Gostak] - at [[SPAG]]; review by [[Duncan Stevens]].
===Spoilers===
* [http://webhome.idirect.com/~dswxyz/gostak.html Gostakian to English Dictionary] - an attempt at making sense of this game's vocabulary by [[David Welbourn]].

[[Category:Games|Gostak]] [[Category:Games in 2001|Gostak]] [[Category:IF Comp games|Gostak]] [[Category:Inform 6 games|Gostak]] [[Category:Surreal|Gostak]] [[Category:XYZZY Award winning games|Gostak]] [[Category:Z-code games|Gostak]]