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So what's the significance of the small 9?

The Sleuthing Squad eagerly search pants, although neither find an axe to take therein (Jimmy finds a warhammer, while Larry discovers something that feels like a deep sea anglerfish).  Their preoccupation with pants-stuff distracts them from the remote control for the moment.  In the meantime the Guilty Droid manages to free one of the Dame of Dangerous Disproportion's hands.

Hardly foreign to me, as a Canadian, but the rest of the world might get a kick out of it so I thought I'd share.

[Jabba Hutt]

Spoiler

Well, I'm thinking Jabba Hutt, because he's unthin (i.e. fat), kingly (holds court), and the global crime boss of tatooine.

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I heartily endorse this event or product.

[Nico Collard]

Colonel Fat goes after a joint company. (11)

Spoiler

Nico Collard of Broken Sword

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Touché.

2M3XIVAC (6)

Spoiler

AGS Related

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Jimmy commands the droid to free the Dame of Dangerous Disproportion, which it attempts to do (although it feels extra guilty for its efforts).  Unfortunately she seems to be held on with some sort of Velcro power which resists the droid's most strenuous efforts.  Meanwhile Evil Dr. Science-Brain escapes his leg manacles and flees into the darkness.  Jimmy asks Larry if he is feeling well-enough to conduct a pursuit, but words fail him as he realizes the ravages wrought by the Reporportioning Ray.

Strange Exotic John Floss (24)

Spoiler

AGS Related, multiple words (obviously)

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Jimmy commands the Guilty Droid to push his former master over, and the ever obedient droid obeys (but feels guilty just the same).  Unlike when he used to pay his thirteen-year-old buddies to push him into precociously endowed girls back in middle-school, this time Evil Dr. Science-Brain's face does not land on target.  Instead, he is almost immediately squashed by the falling Larry.  Together, they completely block any passage to the battle axe, leaving Jimmy and the Dame of Dangerous Disproportions to contemplate their next move.

[Sinitrena]

Most Believable World Sinitrena.  Her detailed account of Flajabai society makes it seem almost real.

Most Interesting World This one was very hard for me to decide, but I think Sinitrena wins out again.  Obviously Mandle's ULTRAREALMS is more surrealistically stimulating, but it's almost so beyond human comprehension that it transcends the "interesting" category.   Sinitrena, on the other hand, has wrought a vivid description of a whole civilization down to the most fascinating detail.
   
Best Writing Technique I've got to give this to Mandle - the text-adventure/choose-your-own-adventure format was a bold choice that heightened the stakes of visiting his surrealistic ULTRAREALMS.  But also his turn of phrase in describing ULTRAREALMS bordered on the poetic.   

Most Informative Entry Clearly Sinitrena, by dint of format as well as the close observation of her mind's eye.

I was quite impressed with both entries, and lamented the fact that Mandle was unable to finish his entry (even the last few options of what he did write, apparently... ).  I also felt that Sinitrena's entry ended rather abruptly, and was shocked to learn that she almost maxed-out her words (it certainly didn't feel long!).  So a huge bravo to both entrants: if leaving the reader wanting more was a category I would have to vote for both of you!

Under the influence of the Burden of Guilt, the droid is persuaded to turn against its former master.  Evil Dr. Science-Brain's rant stops in mid-sentence, and an eerie silence fills the void.  Or at least it would if not for the haunting peel of a girlish scream....

Jimmy pulls Larry back like an angry bird and launches him at the Reproportioning Ray, and Larry collides with it just in the nick of time!  Evil Doctor Science-Brain is visibly perturbed by the sudden turn of events, while his droid assistant seems to be dwelling on something.

An Account of Atallis

   Ye lords and knights of Wodendom, ye scholars and ye burghers, whomsoever hath learned the art of runic language, and is desirous of knowing the diversities of the races of mankind, read onward.  Your humble servant, the clam merchant Æthelgar, and his sailing companions, having survived the tempests of Thunar in the swells of the Endless àštsjór, and being lost in the windless fogs of a temperate sea for six fortnights, did at last find ourselves wrecked upon the shores of a foreign realm.  And in this island called Atallis therein dwelt a folk of such cunning ingenuity the likes of which I can do no justice by pen alone, though I shall try for the sake of my much travailed and persistent reader.

   We came upon the rocks of their shores by night, our boat being carried by a great bore wave that is frequent in those climes, such that it was smashed verily to pieces.  We the hapless crew would surely have perished in the wreck, but for the great scale of the wave, which left us and the splintered remains of our vessel stranded almost a mile inland.  Having therefore no means of continuing our fraught journey, and half the crew being quite adamant to never again leave the steadiness of shore again, we set about salvaging what we could of our wares and provisions.  For some days we camped in the sodden jungles about the wreck, living mostly off the strange and sundry sea creatures we found stranded in the trees.  But as time went on a great miasmic stench set upon the land, and several of our party fell ill and died.  We survivors were thus driven for fear of our health and haleness into the highlands of the interior.

   Such a sight we were, castaways straggling under the weight of our packs and improvised travois, dressed in nought but rags and sail-canvas, through the mountain trails.  And it was there that we came upon the iron gates, adorned with the giant likenesses of beasts foreign to us, but resembling a lion and a wolf.  To our great dismay these gates were barred to us until our leader, Cynemær, a wine-merchant by trade but a descendent of the noble house of Beorthric, entreated them with gifts and pleasantries to accept us as an embassy from a great and distant empire.  Though none of our party understood a word of their tongue at that time, the Atalli are an inquisitive and generous folk, and by means of gesture and symbolism they came to accept us.

   A word on the Atalli, who are a tall and slender folk of much darker complexion than in our northern climes.  Sashavic the three-fingered oar-slave, who claims to have travelled so far as the Levant and the far flung fringes of Tartary, says that he has never seen folk so tall, such that their heads were as high as we could stretch our arms.  And their eyes seemed larger than ours, giving them a gentle infantile appearance.  But they were far from helpless, for although they seemed to lack all strength of body they were possessed of such ingenious cunning as to render muscle quite useless.  In a day they would not lift a weight heavier than their spoon to feed themselves, nor walk further than a stone's throw, for they had deduced through wisdom and wrought through mechanical skill a solution to all of their daily tribulations.

   Upon acceptance as an embassy we were duly admitted through the iron gate and clothed in the finest textiles of the land.  The Atalli have no knowledge of sheep and wool, and instead dress in the lightest of fabrics that will tear only with the blade of a knife.  In time I was able to connive admittance to one of their webberies, where they harvest the silk of tamed spiders the size of a barrel.  The spiders are trained not only to dispense of their webbing but to weave it as well, which they do diligently for ten hours a day for no more pay than a giant grub to suck dry at the end of their toil, and a safe place for their spiderlings to hatch and grow.  I enquired how it was that the grotesque creatures never turned on their masters, and was told that they sometimes do, but since their venom sacks are removed early in life for use in healing potions, little comes of it.  As a rule, any leg that strikes at its master will be stricken off.  But as my host showed me, though there are a few seven-legged spiders, and the occasional six-legged spider in the works, there are no five-legged spiders.

   Clothed like Saracen princes, we thus embarked on a most wondrous conveyance.  It was a closed wagon armoured all in iron, for in that land they used iron as we might wood, so plentifully does it grow in the fastnesses of their mountains.  And at first we laughed at such lavish waste, for the weight of it was clearly immovable, not by a 100 horses, even if such beasts were known in that land.  But the Atalli have contrived a mechanism not unlike the gears of our clocks which can animate the tools of their existence.  They have a metal, called kapessium, which they work into coils and which can store the power exerted to wind them up, and unleash it when needed in their mechanism.  I have seen their winding-works, where they have harnessed the power of a great waterfall to turn the spent coils, and once torqued they can be redeployed to countless usages.  In our mechanical wagon, thus, the coils of this magnificent metal slowly unwound, turning the clockwork gears and propelling us forward, like a ship of the land, over hill and dell and through tunnels of impossible lengths and bridges of impossible spans until we reached the capital.

   The city, for they have but one in the very centre of the island, far from the destructive waves that frequent their shores, built high upon  a plateau, is the very likeness of a faerie garden.  Here given their teeming population the habitations are stacked one atop the other into great towers some fifty spans high and more, and given the frequent earth-shudders on account of the oppressive heat in those climes, neither wood nor stone nor even iron would survive the stresses of such monumental building.  Instead, the Atalli have combined the wood and iron, building a frame of iron and then enticing a sort of strangler-vine, which normally envelopes its host as it grows, to instead grow about the iron lattice, creating a building of phenomenal strength and durability.  Within these towers they have contrived every manner of convenience, from a levitating platform powered by kapessium, to a floating well that pipes rainfall from the roof through shoots of a wood-like straw to each domicile.  For cooking they have a substance called solarium, which is blacker than night and will not reflect light, which they leave near the glazed wind-eyes of their quarters, and which when struck with a kind of musical fork tuned to the right frequency will release the heat it has absorbed.   And for lighting they keep a kind of worm, which feeds upon their middens, and which when shaken will emit the most intense of glows for several hours at a time, which they suspend from fixtures on their walls and ceilings to dispel the gloom of dusk and night, and return to their feast of slime and rot the next morning.

   Perhaps fearing for the hygiene of his people, for they never seemed to fall ill as we do, the arch-prince of Atallis had us quartered separately in a small home of only 4 tiers, between the market district and his palace.  Nevertheless we were given free reign of the city, and beyond with permission, which was given liberally, so long as we obeyed their laws, which were strictly enforced.  Ceadda the Monk was accused of proselytizing, which is apparently illegal in those parts, and subjected to the punishment of having his buttocks branded shut with a type of red-hot crimping iron.  Typically this procedure results in death from septic fever, but fortunately our first-mate Swain Doubleaxe was happy to undo the operation for him.  Not so fortunate was Wigberht Lackthumb, who was caught stealing in the market, and then had his feet surgically graphed onto the end of his arms, and his hands onto the stumps of his legs.  Nor Swiðhun Oxgirth, who allegedly fondled young children and was hung from his testicles for three days while the kids swung from a barrel suspended from a rope anchored up his ass.  And Pæga Oakenbrügge, who was accused of flirting with a married woman, was bound and forced to lie with a dozen desperate virgins to get thoughts of adultery out of his system, barely survived, although upon reoffending he was sentenced to two dozen even more desperate virgins and died somewhere after seventeen.

   Outside of the entertainment of the law courts, most Atalli were possessed of such leisure time to indulge in the viewing of operatic spectacles in the theatrical houses, or in the baser pursuits of dice and binge-licking.  Wine and beer are unknown to the Atalli, but there exists a passive mid-sized rodent whose tongue, when combined with a certain type of mushroom, produces the most wondrous hallucinogenic sensations.  Now these rodents, slightly larger than a cat, are comparatively rare, and are thus husbanded jealously.  Their front teeth are kept filed almost to the gum, so that when squeezed their tongue shoots out.  Given the varying textures and grains of the tongue it is advisable to invert the rodent, squeeze it, and then lick its tongue upside down, and then chase that with a quick lick of the aforementioned mushroom.  Then one stumbles about in a daze of ecstatic stupor, often laughing inanely like a school maiden, and craving gnawable foodstuffs.  If one tires of this diversion, there is always a sports match going on at the great arena, be it crotch-ball or team pantsing or squid-wrestling.  Often one combines leisure pursuits for greater pleasure.

   The arch-prince, whose name was Pharospeth, was not a hereditary monarch but was elected from amongst the noble families by a strange combination of oratory contest and ritualistic lottery.  After a term of one year there is another simplified election, whereby the arch-prince is voted either up or down by the populous at large.  If he is voted up he ascends to a type of Witan or noble council, from where he governs with other senior figures of the land.  If he is voted down, he is stripped naked, bound, and catapulted from the ramparts.  Either way, the whole process begins anew again.  At any rate, Pharospeth fell victim to popular discontent over a plague of buttock pinching in the market, which his authorities were unable to determine the source of, although some circumstantial evidence showed the impression of only three-fingers on a recent victim.  At any event, during our tenure good Pharospeth fell from grace, and with him went his patronage.  One Sypholius became arch-prince and instantly he whipped up such popular discontent against us that we were compelled to flee the city with a mob on our heels. 

   Life on the lam on Atallis was much less soft and comfortable.  The authorities were equipped with mid-ranged projectiles launched with the aforementioned kapessium and tipped with spider venom, such that its targets were rendered completely paralysed.  This happened to two of our company, who were subsequently captured and whose fate I never learned.  Fortunately the Atalli lack the stamina of we northern barbarians and we were able to out-climb them in the mountains.  On occasion they would try to bombard us from mechanical kites, but the violent air currents at those heights made them prone to crashing and eventually they gave up.  For months we lived on the frigid edge of the mountainside, eating nothing but lichens and bugs made slothful in the chilly air, sleeping rough in a cave and occupying our minds with a circular song that went on and on and on.  And then at length there was a great earth-shuddering, which brought the mountain peak down to the level of the sea, presumably submerging the whole Atallic civilization in the process.  And this great movement of the earth produced yet another bore-wave, which brought another hapless ship to the shore, the crew of which we pantsed like the professionals we had witnessed in the arena, and then stole their boat, which is how we came to arrive back at these shores with no tangible proof of our great adventure.

[dropleaf]

Spoiler

Well, "shaken holder" probably means a rearrangement of the letters of "holder", and then put those inside a "feminine smear".  I'd guess that means "pap smear" or just "pap", but pap + holder = 9 letters, so obviously I've misconcluded somewhere along the line.  But maybe I've misread the clue?  "holder" in "pap" first yields 'pholderap", and the "ph" can then be condensed into an "f".  Then apply the shaken bit to "folderap" and you get dropleaf -my favourite type of table!

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The evil Dr. science-brain guy is in the middle of his melodramatic villain's speech, and won't be interrupted by any distraction, no matter how bungling and graceless.  Apparently his scheme is to zap the Dame of Dangerous Disproportions with his Reproportioning Ray, thus rendering her feminine allure negligible at best, and thereby allowing him to take over the world with some plan that must have been previously discussed before your entrance.

The villain thus engrossed in his performance, Jimmy is able to sneak up behind the droid-thingy and kick it!  Unfortunately its mass, composite alloys and centre of gravity all combine to keep it quite stable, while Jimmy's foot feels like he just kicked a steel I-beam.  Resorting to plan B, he opens its back hatch, and jams in the Burden of Guilt.

Oh let's not forget your ego, Baron!
I nominate thee for Prime Minister of Canada and asketh that thou face be imprintedeth upon all Arm & Hammer Refrigerator Packs in thee Land!!!!!!!!

Why not my fearsomely burly arms?

OK, I think I've just successfully zapped the antacid bug, and we quarantined the hot-sauce bug last night.  So unless anyone's found any other hiccoughs in the gaming experience, I think we should all get back to stroking Ponch's ego with praise and envy.

Thanks everyone for your fantastic feedback!  It was really fun to finally team up with Ponch and make something completely silly.  I'd recommend everyone do it (team up with Ponch, that is).  All at once, of course (it'd be more fun that way ).   

I've been unable to replicate Grundislav's bug -has anyone else experienced any problems?

Ponch will sell you anything if you're paying.  I hear his day job is selling snow-tires to paranoid survivalists in the deserts of west Texas....

I commend you on your patience, btw, Mr. Donkeymilk.  A lesser man would have long since gone mad from lack of gaming.

The stair-slide turns into a chute, which stops suddenly a few feet above a cavern floor.  Fortunately Jimmy's fall was broken by the duffel bag full of loot.  Unfortunately, the contents of the duffel bag are now completely crushed and useless.  Quickly scanning his new surroundings, Jimmy ascertains that both Larry and the Dame of Dangerous Disproportion are in trouble!