Add some whimsical fun with an easter egg - #13152
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The revisions easter egg was removed in [24820] because the revisions UI it hooked into was rewritten and its trigger disappeared with it, not because the egg was unwanted. This gives the payload a new home: a command palette loader that returns no commands, and so stays invisible, until its phrase is typed. The 2013 original shipped as a Dean Edwards packed blob. It is unpacked here into readable source and no longer depends on jQuery, since obfuscated code is not GPL source. See #15262. The trigger phrase is still compared through the original Dvorak/QWERTY cipher so that it is not a readable string in the admin bundle; that is the only obfuscation retained, and it is aimed at users rather than developers. The payload is fetched only once the egg has been invoked, so a normal admin page load carries nothing but the loader. It renders into a self-contained overlay instead of taking over the document as the original did. See #24852.
… admin easter egg. Browser testing surfaced three problems with the overlay. The page behind it stayed scrollable, so the overlay measured 15px narrower than the viewport and left a visible scrollbar strip down the side. Scrolling is now locked on the document element while the scene plays and restored when it is dismissed. The scene inserts text one character at a time, and each character landed in the accessibility tree as its own node. The overlay is purely decorative, so it is now marked aria-hidden. Act two ended on an empty black screen with no indication of how to leave it. It now closes on the line the original used as its noscript fallback, which both ends the scene deliberately and hints that the page is still there.
JSHint enforces single-quoted strings in core JS, and jshint:core failed on this one double-quoted literal. It was written that way only because the line contains an apostrophe, so escape the apostrophe instead.
A registered command appears in the palette as soon as its phrase matches, so anyone typing near the phrase is shown the egg rather than discovering it. Nothing is registered now. A keydown handler watches for Enter while the palette is open and acts on the phrase itself, which leaves the palette showing its ordinary "No results found." state throughout, indistinguishable from a search that missed. The handler runs in the capture phase, so it is guarded on the palette being open and the phrase matching before it touches the event. Verified that ordinary palette commands still run and that Enter on a genuinely empty search does nothing. Also drops the now-unused label constant, since no label is rendered.
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Calling the files easter-egg-* is probably a bit too obvious, maybe we can come up with something a bit less so. |
The loader is enqueued by name on every admin screen that loads the command palette, so its src appears in the markup of an ordinary page load. A file called easter-egg-loader.js announces that something is hidden before anyone goes looking, which is most of what the egg has to offer. Name both files for what they do instead. The payload types lines onto a fullscreen overlay, so teletype.js and teletype-loader.js describe the mechanism while giving away nothing about the surprise. The script handle, the config global, and the overlay class follow. The docblocks still say plainly what this is. Minification strips them, so they never reach a production page, and a core developer reading the source should not have to guess.
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Agreed. Renamed to |
…logue. The doc block credited WordPress 3.6, but 3.6 is where the egg was removed. r8306 added it on July 10, 2008, when trunk was 2.6-beta3, so it first shipped in 2.6 and survived through 3.5.x before r24820 dropped it. Store the dialogue in its Dvorak/QWERTY-substituted form, as the original did, so the payoff does not turn up in a plain-text search of wp-admin/js. The decoder ships alongside it and all of the logic stays readable.
swissspidy
reviewed
Aug 21, 2026
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| var KEY = 'ishdg;rsdkot', |
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| * The dialogue is stored in its Dvorak/QWERTY-substituted form and run back through | ||
| * dvortr() as each line is typed, exactly as the 2008 original stored it. The point is |
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I don't think we should include these kind of references ("exactly as the 2008 original stored it") in the code. It's more AI thinking out loud than helpful context.
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| * Originally written by Matt Mullenweg and committed in r8306 (July 10, 2008) as | ||
| * wp-admin/js/revisions-js.php, under the cover of "Javascriptify revision selections to | ||
| * deal elegantly while comparing." Trunk was 2.6-beta3 at the time, so it first shipped | ||
| * in WordPress 2.6 and survived through 3.5.x. wp-admin/revision.php included it when a | ||
| * post revision was compared to itself. Removed in r24820 (see #24852) for 3.6 because | ||
| * that revisions UI was rewritten and the trigger disappeared with it, not because the | ||
| * egg was unwanted: "There will be opportunities for other easter eggs. This one has had | ||
| * its decade." Restored here with a new home behind the command palette. | ||
| * | ||
| * The original shipped as a Dean Edwards packed blob whose dialogue was additionally run | ||
| * through the Dvorak/QWERTY substitution cipher in dvortr(). #15262 raised that packed | ||
| * code is not GPL source, and r16826 answered it with a comment pointing at the ticket | ||
| * rather than with readable code. The packing is dropped here: all of the logic ships as | ||
| * ordinary source. The cipher is kept, on the dialogue only, so the payoff does not turn | ||
| * up in a plain-text search of wp-admin/js. It hides the lines from a grep, not from a | ||
| * reader, and the decoder sits a few lines below. This file is also only fetched once the | ||
| * egg has already been invoked, so it never loads on a normal admin screen. | ||
| * | ||
| * Timings, dialogue, and staging are faithful to the original. |
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Similar here, this context could go into the ticket, not the file.
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| var ACT_ONE = [ | ||
| 'O.nu[jrmlapcorb e.y.jy.ev', | ||
| 'Cbcycaycbi cbucbcy. nrrl .ojd.,an lpryrjrnv', | ||
| 'O.nu e.oypgjy cbvvv 3', | ||
| '2', | ||
| '1' | ||
| ]; | ||
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| // %s is replaced with the current user's display name. | ||
| var ACT_TWO = [ | ||
| '<at. glw %ovvv', | ||
| 'Yd. Maypcq dao frgvvv', | ||
| 'Urnnr, yd. ,dcy. paxxcyv' | ||
| ]; | ||
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| // Left on screen at the end, as the original's noscript fallback did. | ||
| var CLOSING = 'Erb-y n.y ydco dall.b aiacbv'; | ||
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| var FROM = '\',.pyfgcrl/=\\aoeuidhtns-;qjkxbmwvz"<>PYFGCRL?+|AOEUIDHTNS_:QJKXBMWVZ[]', | ||
| TO = 'qwertyuiop[]\\asdfghjkl;\'zxcvbnm,./QWERTYUIOP{}|ASDFGHJKL:"ZXCVBNM<>?-='; |
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i18n is ... challenging here 😄 Some good suggestions on the ticket about using lang attribute (and also the accessibility remarks)
| * around it is ordinary source. | ||
| */ | ||
| var ACT_ONE = [ | ||
| 'O.nu[jrmlapcorb e.y.jy.ev', |
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Doesn't seem very accurate anymore. What about 'O.nu[p.u.p.bj. e.y.jy.ev',? See also discussion on the ticket.
Cut the provenance narrative and the rationale walkthroughs from the file headers, leaving the facts a reader of the code needs. The history belongs on the ticket.
…s own. The self-comparison line no longer describes how the egg is reached, and a self-destruct countdown risks reading as a compromised site. Announce a routine maintenance cycle instead, and drop the closing line: the scene now clears itself and hands the admin page back. See #65907.
The loader swallowed every Enter whose search text matched the phrase, so a post titled with it could never be opened from the palette. Defer to the active option whenever the palette has one. See #65907.
adamsilverstein
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Description
Restores the admin easter egg WordPress used to trigger by comparing a revision to itself. It shipped for about a decade and came out in [24820] (see #24852) when the revisions UI was rewritten and the "compare a revision to itself" state stopped existing. It was not removed because anyone objected to it, only because its doorway disappeared.
The command palette is the new doorway. No command is registered: a registered command shows up in the results the moment its phrase matches, which hands the egg to anyone who happens to type near it. Instead a keydown handler watches for Enter while the palette is open and acts on the phrase itself. The palette shows its ordinary "No results found." state throughout, so typing the phrase looks exactly like a search that missed.
The phrase is compared through the same Dvorak/QWERTY substitution cipher the original used, so it is not a readable string in the admin bundle. It can be worked out from the source with a little effort, which seems like about the right amount.
The two files are named for what they do -
teletype.jsandteletype-loader.js- rather than for what they are. The loader is enqueued by name on every admin screen with the palette, so its src is right there in the markup, and a filename with "easter egg" in it gives away most of the fun before anyone goes looking. The docblocks still say plainly what this is; minification strips them, so they never reach a production page.Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/65907
Notes on the payload
Timings, dialogue, and staging are faithful to the original. A few things needed updating after twelve years:
<blink>andtext-decoration: blinkare both gone from browsers. Replaced with a CSS@keyframesblink, plus aprefers-reduced-motionguard.html/bodyCSS and stripping nodes out of the page's first<p>. The scene now renders into its own overlay and touches nothing on the admin page.aria-hidden. Without it, text typed one character at a time lands in the accessibility tree one node at a time.Only a small loader is added to admin pages. The scene itself is fetched at the moment it is invoked, so a normal admin load carries nothing else.
How has this been tested
Also verified:
grunt jshint:coreandgrunt typecheck:jspass,phpcsis clean.Types of changes
src/js/_enqueues/admin/teletype.js, fetched on demand.src/js/_enqueues/admin/teletype-loader.js, enqueued with the command palette.wp_enqueue_command_palette_assets().admin-jsbuild map.AI Use
Both the code and this description came out of a back and forth with 🤖 Claude Code. I will review and test.