Typewriter mystery game

A typewriter mystery game was a specific type of typewriter art popular in the mid-20th century.

A typewriter owner would be presented with a set of instructions: press a key this many times, press another key, move on to the next line. Upon finishing the typing, a picture would emerge on the page. First lines of a simple typewriter mystery could look like this:

[1] 2 X, 3 spaces, 2 X, 1 space, 2 X, 3 spaces, 2 X, 2 spaces, 2 X
[2] 2 X, 2 spaces, 7 X, 2 spaces, 2 X, 2 spaces, 2 X              
[3] 2 X, 3 spaces, 5 X, 3 spaces, 2 X, 2 spaces, 2 X              
[4] 2 X, 5 spaces, 1 X, 6 spaces, 4 X                             

XX   XX XX   XX  XX
XX  XXXXXXX  XX  XX
XX   XXXXX   XX  XX
XX     X      XXXX

A photo of a typewriter mystery game, its result, and the typewriter it was written on.

Typewriter mystery games were published in magazines (such as Woman's Realm[1] and The Journal of Business Education[2]), and collected in separate books.[3][4][5] The “mystery” in the name refers to the fact that a visual result of the instructions would sometimes be presented on a different page, in the following issue of the magazine, or withheld altogether, making typing the only immediate way to discover the picture.

The end result of a typewriter mystery game would be a picture similar to the later ASCII art,[6] except it would often use overtyping – making several passes over the same line,[1] unavailable or difficult on computer screens. The photo would often be a portrait of a person[1] or an animal.