What are scrambled words in Minecraft end poem?

The Minecraft end poem's final quote, originally written by Harriett Jackson Brown Jr. (Image via Mojang)
The Minecraft end poem's final quote, originally written by Harriett Jackson Brown Jr. (Image via Mojang)

When Minecraft players defeat the Ender Dragon in Survival Mode, they receive an endgame poem before being loaded back into the game. It is pretty meta and unusual and even features some scrambled text in a few lines for users to decipher.

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Overall, two lines in the Minecraft ending poem are scrambled, and they move forward at a pretty decent clip. This may confuse gamers about what these lines read and their connection to the larger text.


Minecraft: Breaking down ending poem's jumbled lines

Questions posited by Minecraft's end poem (Image via Mojang)
Questions posited by Minecraft's end poem (Image via Mojang)

Interestingly enough, the end poem's scrambled words in its lines are stored in the game's client file in Java Edition. In Bedrock Edition, the lines are stored in a text file instead.

Most of the poem is a conversation between two seemingly powerful entities discussing the gamer, who is beginning to understand the world and the greater universe around them.

However, despite what the player has learned, they still don't know the deeper meaning of the universe. This is what these scrambled words seem to imply.

The two most notable lines in the poem are indeed those with scrambled text. Notably:

"It worked, with a million others, to sculpt a true world in a fold of the [scrambled], and created a [scrambled] for [scrambled], in the [scrambled]."

And this line:

"Sometimes, I do not care. Sometimes I wish to tell them this world you take for truth is merely [scrambled] and [scrambled], I wish to tell them that they are [scrambled] in the [scrambled]. They see so little of reality, in their long dream."
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The two lines heavily suggest that the world users created in-game is not what it seems, and they must look beyond the "dream" of the game itself. The literal text the scrambled words cover is not located anywhere in the game files, as they're meant to serve as blanks filled in by gamers.

When they have a sense of the "larger dream," as the poem states, they'll be able to find the answers on their own. The "world they take for truth" is the world they made in-game, but only in understanding their own world, the larger dream, can players interpret the poem as it best suits them through understanding.

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At its essence, what this means for the poem itself is that users should seek to understand their surroundings just as much in their own world as they do in the title. By deciphering the larger dream of their world, the answers in Minecraft become clear by comparison.

The game is something of a social microcosm of how gamers interact with their own world, and the end poem points this out repeatedly.

The omniscient beings discussing the rolling text are imploring players to look at their surroundings with the same curiosity they approach the game world. The final result of the scrambled text is irrelevant, as the pathway to it is the real goal.

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It's quite a philosophical take on the world's most popular sandbox game, but an intriguing one. By not offering a tried and true answer, users are left to decipher things on their own and make sense of their world.

This isn't far removed from the game itself, which places gamers in an expansive world and asks them to make sense of it. Will Minecrafters ever be able to read between the lines? It really comes down to them, and life is what they make it.