In the March 1991 issue of the Eamon Adventurer’s Guild Newsletter, Wm. Trent described a mystery involving Donald Brown’s The Search for the Key:
Dear Tom,One of my favorite games is a short game (only 20 rooms) called “Search for the Key” (#80) by Donald Brown. For the casual player this game probably doesn’t do much for them. You cannot enter this game with a powerful character but as a beginner. I note that it is rated as a 2. My rating for it since it is such a challenge would be about 7. I have played it at least 200 times and have lost only about 5 times in the last 150 times. I would say that I know more about this little game than the author. Usually I lost because of broken weapons so that I had no way to eliminate the black panther. I usually finish up with $80,000 to $100,000 and four of the best weapons that money can buy. I don’t know anyone who ever was able to get more than two weapons. At one time I was running it as the Eamon Challenge on our BBS offering anyone who could come out of the game with $40,000 a $25 prize. No one solved the mystery so I have not revealed it. I doubt if the author even realized the quirk in the game which allowed me to win this way. I wonder if you or any of the other adventurers can figure out how I do it. - Wm. Trent
Nobody solved his challenge.
Years later, when I corresponded with Trent, he could no longer remember how he had done it.
In 2026, with considerable help from ChatGPT, I believe the mystery was finally solved.
Reverse-engineering the actual Eamon disks
The breakthrough began almost by accident.
I recently realized that ChatGPT could now Apple II .dsk disk images. Rather than relying only on walkthroughs, reviews, or surviving documentation, ChatGPT could examine the disk catalog, Applesoft BASIC programs, room and artifact data, monster statistics, and special game logic.
I first uploaded John Nelson’s standard Eamon conversion of The Search for the Key, Eamon #80.
ChatGPT reconstructed the dungeon and found several quirks that were not obvious from the published reviews. Among them was an unintended way to avoid fighting the Black Panther: the player can FLEE into the Key room, GET KEY, and then use the Key as described in the introduction by entering:
SAY <your character's name>
The player is then teleported home.
But that still did not explain Trent’s extraordinary amount of money or his four excellent weapons.
More importantly, something Trent wrote did not agree with Nelson’s converted version:
“You cannot enter this game with a powerful character but as a beginner.”
Nelson’s standard #80 contains no such restriction.
That suggested we were looking at the wrong disk.
The original tournament version
Fortunately, a copy of Donald Brown’s original tournament version of The Search for the Key survives. I had never actually seen this version before. After locating it on Huw Williams Eamon Wiki, I uploaded the tournament edition of the game and we were able to compare both:
- Donald Brown’s original self-contained tournament disk.
- John Nelson’s later conversion into standard Eamon #80.
The tournament disk was the missing piece.
Unlike the later conversion, it contains its own character generator, Main Hall, weapon shop, spell shop, character records, and tournament-specific game launcher.
And buried in that code were the answers to virtually every clue Trent had given us.
Trent really did have to use a beginner
The tournament version explicitly checks the adventurer before allowing entry.
It totals the character’s armor expertise and five weapon abilities. A brand-new character begins with a total of exactly 25.
If the total has risen above 25, the game rejects the player with:
FOO! YOU HAVE ALREADY GOTTEN THE KEY!
So Trent’s statement was correct.
He really could not simply bring an experienced Eamon character into the adventure.
John Nelson removed this tournament restriction when he converted the game to standard Eamon, which helps explain why people studying #80 years later could not reproduce what Trent described.
The perfect “beginner”
The tournament character generator gives the player 48 points to distribute among Hardiness, Agility, and Charisma.
No attribute may be below 3 or above 24.
That means the player can deliberately create:
Hardiness: 24 Agility: 21 Charisma: 3
This is an exceptionally powerful fighter who nevertheless qualifies as a brand-new character.
The extremely low Charisma turns out to be the key to the entire mystery.
The Main Hall pricing bug
Every time the player visits Marcos or Hokas, the program creates a temporary Charisma value.
The relevant code is essentially:
C2 = CH + INT(11 * RND(1) - 5) C2 = C2 + (C2 = 0) RTIO = 10 / C2
The program accounts for the possibility that temporary Charisma might become zero, avoiding a division-by-zero error.
But Donald Brown apparently never considered what would happen if it became negative.
With a permanent Charisma of 3, the random adjustment can produce:
C2 = -1
The resulting price multiplier is:
10 / -1 = -10
Prices become negative, and the purchasing routine then subtracts the price from the adventurer’s gold.
So if the price is -30,000:
GOLD = GOLD - (-30000)
The player's gold increases by 30,000.
In other words, Hokas and Marcos start paying the adventurer to buy things from them.
The $91,000 clue
Hokas sells four spells.
At the -10 price multiplier, their prices become:
BLAST -30,000 HEAL -10,000 SPEED -50,000 POWER -1,000 ---------------- TOTAL -91,000
Buying all four spells can therefore increase the adventurer’s wealth by approximately:
$91,000.
That was the moment the solution became difficult to dismiss as coincidence.
Trent had written:
“I usually finish up with $80,000 to $100,000…”
The bug naturally produces almost exactly the amount of money Trent reported.
The player can repeatedly return to Hokas until the favorable temporary-Charisma roll occurs, making the process reproducible.
Four of the best weapons money can buy
With approximately $91,000 in hand, Trent’s other mysterious claim becomes straightforward.
Marcos will sell a “very good” sword with:
Complexity: +10 Damage: 1D8
The tournament Main Hall permits the adventurer to own four weapons.
So the player can buy four top-quality swords:
SWORD SWORD# SWORD## SWORD###
This also explains Trent’s comment that his rare losses usually happened when his weapons broke and he could no longer defeat the Black Panther.
The four swords were not merely trophies.
They were spare weapons.
We reproduced Trent’s result
We then tested the theory on the actual tournament disk.
I created a character called TEST2 with:
HD = 24 AG = 21 CH = 3
Using the negative-price exploit, I learned all four spells, acquired plate armor and shield, and bought four +10, 1D8 swords, then went on the adventure.
The resulting character screen showed:
That is almost exactly the result Trent described in 1991:
- A beginning character.
- Four of the best weapons money could buy.
- Between $80,000 and $100,000.
One exploit beyond Trent
Our analysis of Nelson’s later conversion also uncovered another quirk.
The Black Panther, normally the final serious opponent, does not actually have to be killed.
The player can FLEE south into the Key room, then:
GET KEY SAY <character name>
and teleport home.
Interestingly, Trent apparently did not use this method. His letter says that his occasional losses occurred when all of his weapons broke and he could no longer kill the Panther.
If he had known the FLEE trick, broken weapons would not necessarily have prevented him from completing the adventure.
So in one respect, our investigation may have found a shortcut that even Trent did not know.
Why the secret remained hidden
The mystery survived for decades partly because The Search for the Key existed in two significantly different forms.
Donald Brown’s tournament version included its own Main Hall and New Characters routine.
John Nelson’s 1984 conversion retained the adventure itself but transformed it into a conventional Eamon adventure.
The economic exploit that made Trent’s feat possible was therefore largely outside the dungeon that later players knew as Eamon #80.
Someone searching the converted adventure for a hidden treasure room or a gold-duplication trick would never find the real answer.
The secret was in the tournament Main Hall.
Solution found
ChatGPT’s ability to inspect the original Apple II .dsk images made it possible to reconstruct both versions of the game, compare their BASIC code, identify the tournament-only beginner restriction, discover the negative-Charisma pricing bug, and test the resulting strategy.
We then reproduced Trent’s published claim on the original tournament disk:
$95,301 in gold and four +10, 1D8 swords.
After approximately 35 years, Wm. Trent’s Search for the Key challenge appears to be solved.
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Disclosure note: This summary was made with the assistance of ChatGPT.
