That's what I was thinking as well. There's also an interview somewhere on YouTube with Ken Thompson talking about this game and he goes off on a bit of a tangent talking about it. Really fun to hear him talk about it.
Yeah, seems they had a lot of fun with it and at the same time they were making history. It's a great story! I've always been quite fascinated by computer history, Unix history in particular.
This is a late reply, but I'd check out Unix: A History and Memoir by Brian Kernighan. It came out late 2019 and it was his recount of what Bell Labs and Unix was like in the early days. So much neat history there - I highly recommend that book.
