| Chapter 3: Things |

| 3.13. Locks and keys

It seems unwise for a door in Notting Hill to be unlocked, so:

> The blue door is lockable and locked. The matching key of the blue door is the brass Yale key.

Since the second sentence here is a little clumsy, we can equivalently say

> The brass Yale key unlocks the blue door.

Yet a third way to say this is:

> The blue door has matching key the brass Yale key.

This introduces three new properties: a door can be locked or unlocked; lockable or not lockable; and it can have a matching key, which must be another thing. The same thing can be the matching key of many different locks: and note that a door can be locked and even lockable without having a matching key at all, in which case the player trying to open it will be permanently out of luck. Doors are ordinarily unlocked, not lockable, and without a matching key.

Containers can also have locks, in exactly the same way, and are allowed to have the same properties. On the other hand supporters never have locks: it makes no sense to be able to lock a tabletop, for instance, and Inform will not allow any discussion of the matching key of a supporter, or of a supporter being locked or unlocked.

20
| Example Disappointment Bay 6 Disappointment Bay: locking up the charter boat's fishing rods.

21
| Example Neighborhood Watch A locked door that can be locked or unlocked without a key from one side, but not from the other.

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