Swordfish (password)
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The use of the word "Swordfish" refers to a password which originated in the 1932 Marx Brothers movie Horse Feathers in a scene where Groucho Marx, as Professor Wagstaff, attempts to gain access to a speakeasy guarded by Baravelli (Chico). It was referenced in the movie Swordfish, the Terry Pratchett novel Night Watch, the book The Sword of the Samurai Cat, the movie Meet the Applegates, the movie Arena, the computer games Discworld, Return to Zork and Quest for Glory, and a Commodore 64 computer game Impossible Mission. In the premier episode of the television show Sam & Max, a character says "What's the password...? And if you say 'Swordfish' I'll lose it!"[1], and in the later Sam & Max Season One, in a scene during the third episode where the player is given a dialogue selection to guess random passwords one of the passwords that is guessed is swordfish.
The original dialogue from Horse Feathers occurred as follows:[2]
- Baravelli: ...you can't come in unless you give the password.
- Professor Wagstaff: Well, what is the password?
- Baravelli: Aw, no. You gotta tell me. Hey, I tell what I do. I give you three guesses. It's the name of a fish.
- Professor Wagstaff: Is it "Mary"?
- Baravelli: [laughing] 'At's-a no fish!
- Professor Wagstaff: She isn't? Well, she drinks like one! ...Let me see... Is it "Sturgeon"?
- Baravelli: Aw, you-a craze. A "sturgeon", he's a doctor cuts you open when-a you sick. Now I give you one more chance.
- Wagstaff: I got it! "Haddock".
- Baravelli: 'At's a-funny, I got a "haddock" too.
- Wagstaff: What do you take for a "haddock"?
- Baravelli: Sometimes I take an aspirin, sometimes I take a calomel.
- Wagstaff: I'd walk a mile for a calomel.
- Baravelli: You mean chocolate calomel? I like-a that too, but you no guess it. [Slams door. Wagstaff knocks again. Baravelli opens peephole again.] Hey, what's-a matter, you no understand English? You can't come in here unless you say, "Swordfish." Now I'll give you one more guess.
- Professor Wagstaff: ...swordfish, swordfish... I think I got it. Is it "swordfish"?
- Baravelli: Hah. That's-a it. You guess it.
- Professor Wagstaff: Pretty good, eh?
Harpo Marx ("Pinky"), whose characters operated only in pantomime, is still able to get into the speakeasy by pulling a fish and a small sword out of his trench coat and showing them to the doorman.
The password "Swordfish" was also used in...
- Hackers (1995)
- The Net (1995)
- Swordfish (2001)
- Return to Zork (1993)
"Swordfish" is also used as a name in the P. G. Wodehouse novel, How Right You Are, Jeeves. In the story, a recurring Wodehouse character named Sir Roderick Glossop poses as a butler in order to secretly determine the sanity of another character. The various residents in the pastoral manor take to calling Glossop "Swordfish", most likely a tribute to the movie scene described above.
