# Talk:The Oracle
The oracle is a unique monster and the "Oracle Room" is a dungeon feature. So The Oracle is both. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PraetorFenix (talk • contribs) 19 June 2006

Can someone verify this: "The experience gain is higher when first buying a major consulation and then a minor than vica-versa." I cannot find the source where i learned this from. --BlackShift 09:29, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I modified the article to include source code references. --Jayt 12:12, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Contents

1 More mythohistory stuff
2 Male vs Female
3 level features
4 Zot
5 P = NP
6 Sacrifice: (SLASH'EM?)
7 Special oracularity

More mythohistory stuff
In particular, the Delphic Sibyl was not actually connected with the Delphic Oracle itself; the NetHack Oracle is actually a reference to the Pythia; I also added notes on the different oracles referenced by the sound effects, and some more about rec.humor.oracle.
I'm also tentatively suggesting changing the title of that section to "History", as the Pythia is an actual historical figure. I've changed it to "Mythology &amp; History" temporarily until I see if anyone agrees with me&nbsp;:-o GreyKnight 12:52, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

"Origin" is probably better, as the section heading "History" is being used for describing a thing's behaviour in a past version of NetHack (see style guide). There's not an awful lot of stuff in NetHack based on real history, but just about every article could have a History section. --Jayt 13:58, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Male vs Female
Is the oracle really female? Where does it say that?

Notice the M2_FEMALE flag in Monst.c#line2399 --Paxed 14:06, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
level features
Can the oracle level have a shop? A temple? Another type of special room? I have never seen any of it. However, as I read the source code, it should be possible. -Tjr 14:21, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

In vanilla level may not contain more than one special room (I am not sure whatever oracle counts as one) Bulwersator (talk) 06:11, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
Not possible - the Oracle level comes from Oracle.des, where all the other rooms are "ordinary". --paxed (talk) 06:17, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
Zot
Anyone know what this is a reference to? --AileTheAlien 01:04, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

The Internet Oracle answers queries in a humorous manner.  After too many jackasses asked it "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood", it started ZOTting such questions. --Darth l33t 02:23, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
P = NP
The P=NP oracularity should be explained. I've been told you get it when you try to stiff the Oracle. ––Tjr (talk) 00:48, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_%3D_NP_problem
It's a really big problem in computer science. It appears when you have more than enough gold for a minor consultion but not enough gold for a major. The oracle will then take all your money and produce a quotation from a book on NP complete. I think it's from this. -- Qazmlpok (talk) 01:00, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
Sacrifice: (SLASH'EM?)
I was reading through the SLASH'EM pray.c
and noticed a whole bunch of code relating to sacrifice on the Oracle level.
Could someone update this article (and possibly also the sacrifice article) to account for that code?
71.191.144.10 21:52, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Special oracularity
The article states that there's a special oracularity if you request a major consultation without enough money, but I checked both rumors.c and oracles.txt and couldn't find it. What exactly is it? --Kahran042 (talk) 18:49, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

It's in makedefs.c, line 1755. Rumors.c lines 39-40 mention that it is a special case, added by makedefs to the oracles file (makedefs generates the oracles file from oracles.txt).
"...it is rather disconcerting to be confronted with the
following theorem from [Baker, Gill, and Solovay, 1975].
Theorem 7.18  There exist recursive languages A and B such that
  (1)  P(A) == NP(A), and", "  (2)  P(B)&nbsp;!= NP(B)
This provides impressive evidence that the techniques that are
currently available will not suffice for proving that P&nbsp;!= NP or
that P == NP."  [Garey and Johnson, p. 185.]

That's the complete text (with some blank lines removed). -- Qazmlpok (talk) 23:32, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks a lot. This should probably also be in the article proper. --Kahran042 (talk) 09:21, 9 January 2017 (UTC)