And I’m weak and just wrote something that processes the questions but not the front and end matter. But it won’t be of much use to non-Rubyists.
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I actually created a program to do this for Shadow in the Cathedral and the result is here:
Shadowhints.html is the file.
No idea if I still have that program.
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Wow, those SitC clues are cool. I love the nonsense words–they feel less intimidating than ROT13.
I remember seeing the original InvisiClues as HTML and being blown away. I hoped one day to make something like them.
Juhana Leinonen had code that allowed for Invisiclues-type HTML. I used it to create a template where you could markup plain text to InvisiClues-ish format where you can keep clicking on clues until you see them all. I haven’t used it in a while. It duplicates in-game hints and a walkthrough too much, but it’s fun to create.
My invisiclues for Shuffling Around are here. stale-tales-slate/shuffling-invisiclues.htm at main · andrewschultz/stale-tales-slate · GitHub
ETA: the raw text it’s converted from is here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/andrewschultz/stale-tales-slate/main/Shuffling/sa.txt
Might be good to convert all the invisiclues on infodoc.plover.net to html and put them up in a parallel directory on infodoc.plover.net.
In these modern times, “click on clues to continue” is better than “highlight the white-on-white text.” The latter trick doesn’t work on mobile browsers, and there are a lot of mobile browsers.
EDIT-ADD: Also, I should note, a screen reader won’t know that white-on-white text should be invisible! (Thanks Drew for mentioning this aspect.)
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The Z5 files don’t really work with screen reader tech, so far as I can tell. The most common config reads like a form-feed printer: as a line displays on-screen, it is spoken aloud.
The menu headings are not ever form fed, so they are never read aloud. There may be a configuration that works, but it’s no good out of the box.
An HTML conversion would be a nice community service.
The output ain’t pretty, but my invisiclue script’s output seems to be complete. I’ve only tried it only on the Zork invisiclues so far. I need to do something better with the “this space intentionally left blank” case and handle the table of treasure better.
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I may have accidentally mostly finished the job of HTML-ifying the Invisiclues with this twist: I haven’t played many of these yet and do plan to someday so I’ve avoided looking too closely at the output so there could be some hilariously huge problems. So if you want to report a problem, please be vague – there’s a sentence you won’t hear a developer say every day.
There are a couple of references to images where it’d be nice to dig up the actual image. On the bright side, there’s already alt text in place! And it’d be nice to turn the tables into real tables and not just dump the text into a pre-tag. But overall the parts I’ve looked at seem not bad.
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Some line breaks have disappeared from where they should be (Sorcerer, “spells, potions, and their locations”) and others have appeared (Sorcerer, sample question) but overall this is very readable!
Thanks. This error isn’t surprising and there are probably others. It’s an easy fix; I just have to put something matching the section name in the should_merge? function.
That’s a function of having implemented these as HTML detail tags. Maybe tomorrow I’ll replace that with a javascript solution.
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Ugh. I take it all back. The original Invisiclues’ structure varied all over the place and the text versions have plenty of variation in formatting. Doing a decent job of HTML-ifying them is a lost cause without part of the process being looking at the originals and hand-editing the source into something with consistent markup that can handle more things, like at least two levels of headers, and Deadline’s hidden questions.
Beyond these text files, does anyone anywhere have the actual revealed content? I assume not, or how could it not be in the Internet Archive by now?
Zork II’s text file is missing the sample question – “How do you get down off a dragon?”. For the HTML-ified Zork II Invisiclues I went ahead and filled in the obvious answer.
And, like I said, there are a couple of references to images.
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“You get down off a goose, not a dragon?”
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I went with “duck”. 
But there were three answers!
I see now that the original Zork Users Group Zork 2 Invisiclues (PDF) didn’t have the sample question; the subsequent Infocom Zork 2 Invisiclues (PDF) did.
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This isn’t, mind you, a herculean project. But it’s not a project for someone avoiding spoilers.
I’ve found there’s a Lost Treasures of Infocom (Un-)Invisiclues PDF which is great for checking the text, but which doesn’t have any illustrations, maps, or sample questions… except for Hitchhiker’s for which it has the maps. (There were separate map PDFs for others, not sure if it’s all of them.) And Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom includes a revealed-Invisiclues PDF much like Lost Treasures’ but doesn’t have Hitchhiker’s and does include maps for Plundered Hearts and Trinity, which weren’t in Lost Treasures, and also for Stationfall, which was. I couldn’t find a readily downloadable copy of the PDF, but one can download the whole cd-rom image. (Lost Treasures II didn’t have an Invisiclues PDF.)
Wow. I knew it was a bother to try to collect all the ancillary Infocom materials but it’s worse than I thought!
I’ve also been struggling with coming up with a decent way to make these accessible. There’s an inherent struggle here to manage that in the face of deliberately withholding information. What I have right now is pages with lots of links whose link text is just A, B, C, D, which flunks accessibility in a big way on two counts: links should communicate meaningfully where they’re going, and you shouldn’t have the same link text going to different places.
I’m leaning toward the best approach being that every clue (or other thingy with hidden content) gets its own page or popup window. In context, with the question being alone on the page or window, links labelled A, B, C, D are maybe okay. (“Use more popup windows” isn’t often heard in accessibility circles, but this is a weird case.)
I did a bunch of research on this in the past and concluded that the best option for me was posting invisiclues here on the forum, with [spoiler] tags.
Works pretty well in my experience. They’re easy to read and edit. People can ask questions. I believe they’re screen reader compatible, and if not, we can file a big on Discourse and they’ll fix it.
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NVDA reads spoilers just like normal text. If you’re in line-by-line mode there’s a break before each, I think? But no indication that they’re supposed to be hidden.
They’re not. And there’s not some easy, direct way to fix it: accessibility would require a fundamentally different approach.
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Ah, that’s annoying. I was assuming that there would be an ARIA role that would hide it, and that could be easily added. I guess the code could replace the actual text instead of just using a CSS blur filter, but…getting it the right size might be a problem? Hmm. Actually you could just measure it before you replace it? That shouldn’t be too difficult…