the.com/walkthrough
Someone else's trial and error, pre-chewed so you never have to rage-quit.
means A step-by-step guide that leads you through a process or task from start to finish.
from A straightforward compound of 'walk' and 'through' — the metaphor of physically walking a route being extended to mean guiding someone through a procedure. The sense of walking someone through steps is old, but 'walkthrough' as a single word crystallized in the 20th century, first for guided tours or rehearsed run-throughs (theater and software testing both used it for 'dry run before the real thing'), later narrowing in gaming culture to mean a full guide through a game's levels and puzzles.
- origin
- theater term for rehearsing without full performance
- gaming boom
- exploded with GameFAQs text files in the 90s
- paradox
- following one perfectly teaches you nothing
- best kind
- shows the dead ends, not just the win