"the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" gained a reputation for deviousness. "computer gaming world" reported on rumors that "several important people within the [video game] industry cannot (snicker, snicker!!!) even get out of [the] first room!" perhaps the most notorious instance involved getting a babel fish out of a dispenser in the hold of the vogon ship, which would translate the vogon language to english. this tricky puzzle appeared early in the game and required the player to use a variety of obscure items in a specific fashion to create a rube goldberg-like chain of events, and the puzzle had to be "solved" within a limited number of turns. failure to "solve" the babel fish puzzle did not kill the player, but rendered the remainder of the game unwinnable, as one subsequent puzzle requires the player to gain a passcode based on vogon-written instructions, otherwise undecipherable without the fish. that particular puzzle became so notorious for its difficulty that infocom wound up selling t-shirts bearing the legend, "i got the babel fish!" adams stated that the puzzle's difficulty, and the notable game play change that it begins, was intentional; "just as the player gets comfortable in the narrow neck, the bottom drops out!"