I'm playing the Infocom text adventure Deadline. I played it decades ago as a kid, but I'm struggling with figuring out the words and phrases the game's parser can understand.

For example, I found one of the NPC's called Ms. Dunbar. I entered "talk to ms. dunbar" and the game responded "ms. dunbar is listening". I wanted to ask Ms. Dunbar about her recollection of the events that occurred on the morning of the murder. I wanted to see how well it aligned with the previous answers she'd given the police.

So, I tried variations of the following:

• ms. dunbar, what happened the morning of the murder
• ms. dunbar, tell me about the morning of the murder
• ms. dunbar, describe the morning of the murder
• ms. dunbar, what did you do the morning of the murder

The parser didn't understand "what", "happened", "about", "morning", etc. etc.

I've experimented with various inputs that are imperative statements like "give X to Y", and I've been successful with this type of input. But I can't figure out how to question suspects.

So, my question is: How do I interrogate the various suspects in the game since the parser seems to only understand imperative sentences?

Thanks,
Craig

Hi Craig, nice to see you here, and I hope all is well.

I bought Deadline when it was first released, but I sure don't remember now what all the commands were.

Have you taken a look at any walkthroughs? I found one here. There is another one here. Also, here.

I realize that it will be hard to avoid spoilers this way but it's all I can think of to suggest at the moment.

Thanks Marian. I'll check those out.

Good luck!