🕹️ Pac•tionary

The living vocabulary of Pac-Nerd. Unlike the original 2006 Pac•tionary, this isn't arcade history — it's a working glossary that grows with the game. A term earns its place by being something players actually say: "I Travised," "nice Frambit," "that was a Convergent Handless." Since Pac-Nerd leans heavily on the mechanics of Ms. Pac-Man, much of this vocabulary applies to that game too.

Work in progress. Many of these describe situations that can be detected automatically, and will eventually become badges, stats, and replay tags.

Basics

Pellet

The small dots that fill the maze, commonly just called dots. Clearing all of them — power pellets included — ends the board.

Power Pellet

The large flashing dot that makes the ghosts Frightened and edible for a short window. Four to a board. (Also "energizer.")

Ghost House

The central pen the ghosts start in and respawn from after being eaten — the "jail" in a Gambit.

Frightened

The ghost state triggered by eating a Power Pellet: the monsters turn blue, slow down, flee, and become edible. The window is timed, and the ghosts flash white just before it ends.

Corridor

A straight run of maze between two junctions, with no side branches. A ghost in a corridor is committed to its heading — it can't reverse, and won't choose a new direction until it reaches a junction. Exploiting that constraint is the central strategy of the game.

Junction

An intersection where corridors meet, and the only place a ghost chooses a new direction. Monsters can't reverse mid-corridor; they hold their heading until they reach a junction and commit. That decision point is what makes their movement readable — and what a Lure exploits.

Warp

The side passage that loops one edge of the maze around to the other: exit the left side, reappear on the right. Ghosts crawl through it slowly.

Combos

Gambit

A ghost combo eaten off a single power pellet. In Pac-Nerd, frightened ghosts can be eaten again after they respawn from jail while the pellet is still active, so a Gambit is not capped at four. Combos are qualified by ghost count: 3-ghost, 4-ghost, 5-ghost, 6-ghost. A 7-ghost Gambit is unconfirmed but may be possible.

Frambit

A Gambit in which the fruit is also collected during the combo. (Formerly "Fruity Gambit.")

"6-ghost frambit!!!"

Handless

A Gambit performed without touching the controls after committing.

Vertical Handless

A Handless in which the ghosts are eaten in a vertical line.

Royal Handless

Four successful Handless Gambits on a single board.

Ultimate Handless

Finishing the board while performing a Handless.

Convergent Handless

A Handless in which the ghosts begin out of formation but naturally converge into a straight line before they are eaten. The mirror image of a Divergent Handless.

"That was a Convergent Handless."

Divergent Handless

A Handless that begins with the ghosts properly aligned but whose formation breaks apart after the player has committed. (Replaces the older "Dirty Handless" — this names the ghost geometry directly.)

Double-Up

Eating a power pellet while the previous one is still active — burning a fresh Frightened window on ghosts that are already blue. A dead giveaway of Dot-clearing. Also known as Blue Balls.

Boards & Endings

Travis

Ending the board before collecting the ghost points still available after the final power pellet. The primary cause is forgetting or failing to leave Safety Dots, so the last pellet clears the board before the ghosts are eaten.

"I Travised."

See also: Safety Dots, Travis-proofing.

Safety Dots

Pellets deliberately left uneaten so the board cannot accidentally end during the final power pellet.

Travis-proofing

Intentionally leaving Safety Dots to prevent a Travis.

"I Travis-proofed the last Gambit."

Dirty Board

A board left with many uneaten pellets after all power pellets have been consumed.

Sloppy Seconds

Starting a level in a Dirty Board state after losing a life on it — picking your next turn back up on the mess your previous attempt left behind.

Fool's Exit

Falsely believing you're about to finish the level as you clean up what look like the last dots — when there are actually more still sitting elsewhere on the board. Often fatal: you drop your guard right as the board turns out not to be over.

"Classic fool's exit."

Pac-icide

Intentionally ending a game by sacrificing a life when the run is no longer worth continuing. Also known as Sep-pac-ku.

Mulligan

Abandoning a run to start over — a no-penalty do-over. In the arcade days this was accomplished by standing up and walking away from the tabletop machine; in Pac-Nerd, the custom is the Command-R keystroke. Used to cost a quarter; now it's free.

"Ah screw it, mulligan."

Dot-clearing

Playing to progress rather than to score: hoovering up dots with no interest in eating ghosts or running up points, in the naive belief that the object of the game is to reach the next level, or because you just don't GAF.

Deaths & Traps

Pellet Paralysis

Dying just short of a power pellet because a ghost was allowed to get too close.

Premature Pac-ulation

Undershooting the power pellet and turning back before eating it, so the ghosts are never frightened — and running straight into their clutches.

See also: Pellet Paralysis.

Overeating

Getting too ambitious at the end of a combo and going for one more ghost, only for the Frightened window to run out and the ghost to switch back to lethal before you reach it. One of the most common ways to die. Also known as "a rookie mistake."

Trap

A stretch of board, usually a long tunnel, that's unusually dangerous because ghosts frequently enter it from both ends at once and leave you pincered.

See also: Pincered.

Pincered

Getting trapped in a tunnel by ghosts entering from both sides. Also known as Tunnel Fucked.

Swarmed

Getting trapped by more than two ghosts with no escape. Also known as Uncle Fucked.

"They uncle fucked me! Those jerks."

Already Doomed

A death that has already happened but hasn't landed yet. You slip one close call, then another, then another — but each escape only funnels you deeper, until an inescapable trap finally closes. The sequence can run uncannily long. Far more common in Alpha Stalkers mode, where small missteps compound fast.

"I was already doomed after that turn."

Meltdown

A significant loss of life all on a single level, when the ghosts get extra aggressive.

Early Death

The broad failure mode of dying before your run has really started — you never got going. Two early benchmarks mark it: the first fruit appearing and the first energizer being eaten. A single death before either one counts; at the extreme, the whole game ends — game over before the fruit appears or before an energizer is eaten.

Hit Detection

Quirks of Pac-Nerd's collision test — the moments the hitbox robs you, or saves you.

Whiff

Getting close enough to a Frightened ghost that the eat should happen, but failing to actually collect it before the opportunity disappears. A Whiff is experienced passively: you do not whiff the ghost so much as get whiffed by it. It is the inverse of a Run Through: the hitbox saves you there, and robs you here.

"He whiffed me!"

Warp-Whiff

A special Whiff in which the monster dematerializes on the very frame you would have eaten it and rematerializes at the far portal — teleported out of your mouth by the Warp.

See also: Whiff, Warp.

Total Whiff

Completely and utterly botching an intended Gambit, failing to eat even a single ghost. Unlike a Whiff, which is a local hit-detection robbery, a Total Whiff belongs to the operator: imprecise planning, mechanical malfunction, panic, hesitation, bad geometry, or some other catastrophe that turns a whole Power Pellet into nothing.

This does not apply when you simply do not care about eating ghosts. A Total Whiff requires that you were playing for the Gambit and failed.

"I total-whiffed the last pellet."

Run Through

Running straight through — or around the corner past — a ghost without hit detection firing. You pass through a monster that should have killed you and come out the other side alive.

Ghost Stack

Ghosts pile right on top of you and the hit never quite triggers. Extremely common: the overlap looks fatal, but the collision test disagrees. (Occlusion in dev terms.)

Maneuvers

Ratchet

Rapid joystick oscillation used for fine positioning or hesitation. Also known as juking or spoof.

Cornering

Cutting a corner tightly by inputting the turn before you reach the intersection — the pre-move. Because the input is buffered, Pac rounds the corner without shedding speed and travels a slightly shorter path than a ghost taking the same route, which is how you open distance during a chase.

Lure

Steering a ghost by exploiting the no-reverse rule: monsters only move forward down a corridor and can't change their mind until a junction. Bait one into committing the wrong way and you open up space. (Distinct from Ratchet — this manipulates the ghost, not your own positioning.)

Bottleneck

Exactly what it sounds like — a single corridor the whole pack has to funnel through, one at a time. Sit at the neck and the board sorts the monsters for you: they arrive in a readable line instead of a swarm, and off the right pellet that's a Comet Tail you didn't have to work for. The same geometry that turns a corner into a death-trap turns its throat into a tool — a bottleneck is a chokepoint you're using, instead of one that's using you.

Mulberry Bush

Baiting the ghosts around a loop so you can slip in behind them, then eating the power pellet — the mode change reverses their direction and sends them straight back into your mouth. Especially useful for drawing the Contrarian into striking distance in Alpha Stalkers mode.

"I took 'em around the Mulberry Bush!"

Chump

Waiting for a ghost to pass, then falling in behind it.

See also: Mulberry Bush.

Tight Chump

A special Chump with a ghost both ahead of you and behind you, and very little room between them. May demand insanely accurate microjuking.

"Phew, that was a tight chump."

Hold

When the ghosts settle into a repeating cycle that never reaches you, opening a safe pocket you can sit in — in principle indefinitely. Pac-Nerd's higher resolution makes holds much harder to find and shorter-lived than in the arcade, but they're still possible. Also known as a safe spot, or a "Lucke Loop."

Comet Tail

When all four monsters fall into single file directly behind you, trailing like the tail of a comet. Tense — everyone's chasing at once — but it lines them up beautifully for a straight-line eat off the next power pellet. (Also "Conga Line," when you're leading it on purpose.)

Splitter

When you've finally got the monsters neatly arranged — a Comet Tail, a clean line to eat — and one peels off just to fuck with you, breaking the formation right when you were counting on it.

See also: Comet Tail, Divergent Handless.

Intercepted

When a monster forces you to change direction. It happens constantly — rerouting around threats for basic survival, or getting cut off on the way to the Fruit. What doesn't happen in Pac-Nerd is the old Ms. Pac-Man staple, a live ghost blocking you off a Frightened one: because you can re-eat a ghost after it comes back out of jail, daring gambits stay open — helpfully coaxing the player into attempting more foolhardy ones.

See also: Fruit Guardian, Gambit.

Ghost AI

Pac-Nerd runs more than one ghost brain. The active mode decides how the monsters think.

Alpha Stalkers

Pac-Nerd's native ghost AI, also known as PackHunt. Three of the ghosts coordinate as a pack while the Contrarian breaks formation to try an alternative strategy. Crucially, there is no ditzy one — every monster is playing to win.

Namcosplay

Ghost AI built from a crude reverse-engineering of Ms. Pac-Man; in most situations it behaves like the original arcade AI. Four personalities:

• Chase — pursues directly.
• Vector — intercepts.
• Ambush — tries to get ahead of you.
• Coward — evades; cowardly and ditzy.

Psycho Chase

When Chase becomes enraged and starts moving faster than the other ghosts, triggered by clearing a certain number of pellets from the board. Also known as "slightly more dangerous Chase."

Scatter

When the monsters flip from an orderly regime into a chaotic one. In Namcosplay this is a discrete event that fires twice per board and reverses every ghost at once — also known as a Reversal. In Alpha Stalkers there's no Reversal; scattering just happens organically, because the AI is fidgetier and more chaotic to begin with.

Modes

Charlatan Mode

Also known as Fast-Pac. Doubles Pac's movement speed (2×), resembling the mechanics of Fast Ms. Pac-Man — the charlatan's game.

Fruit

Pac-Nerd's fruit sequence is fixed for the first seven levels, then becomes Multifruit.

* Not actually a fruit.

Fruitwalk

The stretch of time when a fruit is loose on the board — entering, wandering the maze, and there for the taking. Everything fruit happens during the fruitwalk: the grab, the Frobbery, the Fruicide. Also known as fruiting.

"I died during the fruitwalk, missed the banana!"

Fruit Marquee

The fruit's route, as opposed to its window: it enters at one Warp and parades the whole way across for the opposite exit, a single crossing end to end. Where a Drive-by-fruiting ducks out the nearest hole, a Marquee commits to the full traversal — generous and cruel at once, because it offers exactly one clean line to cut it off on, and no second pass. A fruit whose line you can't reach in time is Unreachable: on screen, on offer, and never yours.

See also: Fruitwalk, Drive-by-fruiting.

Multifruit

On higher levels the fruit is no longer fixed per level — it's chosen at random, or possibly by some powerful offscreen entity.

See also: Fruit God.

Fruit God

The omnipotent force that determines which fruit comes out, starting on Multifruit levels.

See also: Multifruit.

Fruit Fucked

When the Fruit God keeps handing you low-value fruits — cherries and strawberries when you were praying for bananas — draw after draw on Multifruit levels.

Frobbery

The general category of the game cheating you out of a fruit — any way the board denies you a fair grab at it. Drive-by-fruiting and its cousins are all species of Frobbery.

Drive-by-fruiting

A Frobbery in which the fruit bolts out the first exit it finds, leaving the maze before you ever get a fair shot at it.

Fruit Mirage

A Frobbery in which the fruit's timer runs out and it vanishes — often the instant before you'd have reached it.

Fruit Guardian

A Frobbery in which a ghost plants itself in the corridor between you and the fruit, standing guard and denying you the pursuit. Also known as interference, or in old Ms. Pac-Man terminology, a cock block.

Fruicide

Dying in pursuit of the fruit — risking life and limb for the grab and paying with a life. Variants include dying before you even reach it, which are harder to detect but no less tragic.

Culture

Backseat Pac-ing

When a spectator tells the player how they ought to be playing their game.