History Main / TryEverything

* In-universe, this is what the narrator of ''Fanfic/PokemonStrangledRef'' does when Steven is first shown after Miki's death. He can't pick up or receive items, battle wild Pokémon, or get useful information from any NPC character, so he lays down on the bed... which turns out to be the way forward.

* In ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire'', Harry has to get into Dumbledore's office, but he doesn't know the password. He does know that the password is always some type of candy, so he rattles off the names of every popular brand he can think of, like "Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans" (then he remembers that Dumbledore doesn't like those, so that's clearly not right), "Chocolate Frog", and "Sugar Quill", before throwing up his arms in desperation and shouting, "Cockroach Cluster!". And ''that'' is the password, which causes the bemused Harry to say “Cockroach Cluster? I was only joking …”

Not to be confused with the Music/{{Shakira}} song from ''WesternAnimation/{{Zootopia}}''.

** Also PlayedForLaughs in ''VideoGame/TheStanleyParable'' with the keypad in the office. You learn the code when The Narrator remarks "There's no way Stanley could know the code was 2-8-4-5", and he remarks it was amazing Stanley was able to figure it out just by trying everything. Even better is when you come back on a second playthrough and remember the code from ''before'' The Narrator tells you: he gets notably upset that you didn't even let him finish talking and forces you to listen to some new-age music for a moment to "calm down your anxiety".

* Paraphrased by the character of Professor Kirk in ''Series/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' when the Pevensie children ask him whether Lucy is lying about Narnia or not. Of course, those who have read the first book in the series realize that the Professor is joking, since he knows perfectly well that Narnia is in fact real.

* Each of the first two ''Franchise/LegendOfZelda'' games, for the good ol' NES, has a place where an item does something in ''one spot'' that it never does anywhere else in the game, with no hint that you should try it. Yes, it's needed to finish the game in both instances.

Not to be confused with the Music/{{Shakira}} song from ''Disney/{{Zootopia}}''.

[[folder: Comic Books]]

[[folder: Fan Fiction]]

[[folder: Film]]

[[folder: Literature]]

[[folder: Live Action TV]]

[[folder: Video Games]]

--->'''Apollo:''' Yes! Nice one, Athena. Keep it up! I don't care if it's totally unrelated to the case or just plain annoying or even embarrassing. Just keep presenting evidence without any regard for others! That's the first step towards becoming a successful trial lawyer!
--->'''Athena:''' Leave to to me! I'll present one piece after another, and then another!

[[folder:Web Comic]]

[[folder: Western Animation]]

[[folder: Real Life]]

[[quoteright:256:[[VisualNovel/NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/shocked_and_appalled.png]]]]

[[folder:Web Comic]]
* The players in ''Webcomic/DMOfTheRings'' respond to the entrance of the Moria mine in this way. They are on their way to chop down some trees to construct a battering ram when the DM ends up screaming the answer to them in frustration.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation]]
* In the ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' cartoon "Ali Baba Bunny", Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck tunnel into the cave of a wealthy sultan. Seeing this, the sultan’s guard Hassan tries to activate the password (which is, “Open Sesame”, naturally) only to realize he has forgotten it, so he rattles off several different S-words (“Uh...Open, sarsaparilla? Open, Saskatchewan? Open, septuagenarian? Open, saddle soap?”) before eventually getting it right.
* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' has the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who don't have their Cutie Marks yet. Since they're desperate to get their Marks, they try everything from paper authors, catapults, sports, chicken catchers and several other things to get their marks of adulthood. All with accompanying MadLibsCatchphrase of "CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS (Insert name of attempted job here) YAY!"
* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'': In "A Better World", Flash tries to open a combination lock by entering all possible combinations at superspeed. Averted when Batman tells him to try his combination, guessing (correctly) that the AlternateUniverse Batman who set the lock might have used the same one.
* Averted in ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' when Dipper is trying to access the Author's laptop and, not knowing the password, tries every possible combination he can think of that's associated with the Author. Unfortunately, it turns out that too many failed attempts triggers the laptop's fail-safe and nearly erases all the data.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life]]
* Security experts refer to something that tries to guess passwords by trying all of them as a "dictionary attack" (i.e., try every word in the dictionary), or a more thorough "brute force attack" (try ''every'' possible combination of letters/digits/symbols/etc.). A similar method, called "rainbow table", consists of getting one's hands on an encrypted password and comparing it with a huge table of possible passwords and their encrypted equivalents.[[note]]This is because good encryption methods use a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapdoor_function "trapdoor function"]]: basically, even if you know the encryption key, you can't directly reverse the process without a different key, or a brute-force effort that dwarfs the rainbow-table approach.[[/note]] The exception to this is the one-time-pad cipher; if you try brute forcing a one-time-pad encryption, you end up with literally thousands to millions of interpretations, and no way to know which was the correct one (that is what the key is for).
** On a meta level, dedicated attackers will scout every possible opening on the system besides user credentials (and indeed there are often many; [[TheCon social engineering attacks]], cross-site scripting, known vulnerabilities for individual applications,...), then try breaking in through all of them, starting with the ones more likely to succeed or least likely to leave a trace.
** Some security systems counter this approach by freezing up if too many wrong guesses are entered and/or imposing a significant (and often increasing) time delay after each wrong guess. Some others feature SelfDestructingSecurity; iOS devices for example can be user-configured to wipe out all data on them after 10 failed passcode attempts.
* Websites that require this in order to navigate the site are known as having [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation "mystery meat navigation."]] MMN is a highly frowned-upon practice, as it can mislead users into believing that there is less content on the page than there really is.
* The old computer axiom PLOKTA (Press Lots Of Keys To Abort). Ritually performed by spreading both hands wide and mashing the keyboard in an effort to make your computer respond.

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' encourages players to try different Pokémon and moves to beat the game, partially from the GottaCatchEmAll slogan which requires players to try ever Pokémon in battle to level them up.

[[folder: Real Life]]
* Security experts refer to something that tries to guess passwords by trying all of them as a "dictionary attack" (i.e., try every word in the dictionary), or a more thorough "brute force attack" (try ''every'' possible combination of letters/digits/symbols/etc.). A similar method, called "rainbow table", consists of getting one's hands on an encrypted password and comparing it with a huge table of possible passwords and their encrypted equivalents.[[note]]This is because good encryption methods use a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapdoor_function "trapdoor function"]]: basically, even if you know the encryption key, you can't directly reverse the process without a different key, or a brute-force effort that dwarfs the rainbow-table approach.[[/note]] The exception to this is the one-time-pad cipher; if you try brute forcing a one-time-pad encryption, you end up with literally thousands to millions of interpretations, and no way to know which was the correct one (that is what the key is for).
** On a meta level, dedicated attackers will scout every possible opening on the system besides user credentials (and indeed there are often many; [[TheCon social engineering attacks]], cross-site scripting, known vulnerabilities for individual applications,...), then try breaking in through all of them, starting with the ones more likely to succeed or least likely to leave a trace.
** Some security systems counter this approach by freezing up if too many wrong guesses are entered and/or imposing a significant (and often increasing) time delay after each wrong guess. Some others feature SelfDestructingSecurity; iOS devices for example can be user-configured to wipe out all data on them after 10 failed passcode attempts.
* Websites that require this in order to navigate the site are known as having [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation "mystery meat navigation."]] MMN is a highly frowned-upon practice, as it can mislead users into believing that there is less content on the page than there really is.
* The old computer axiom PLOKTA (Press Lots Of Keys To Abort). Ritually performed by spreading both hands wide and mashing the keyboard in an effort to make your computer respond.
[[/folder]]

* The players in ''Webcomic/DMOfTheRings'' respond to the entrance of the Moria mine in this way. They are on their way to chop down some trees to construct a battering ram when the DM ends up screaming the answer to them in frustration.

** Some security systems counter this approach by freezing up if too many wrong guesses are entered and/or imposing a significant (and often increasing) time delay after each wrong guess.

See also MillionToOneChance. Compare TalkToEveryone and CombinatorialExplosion, where the ''developers'' have the headache of coping with lots of items and only one way to do it. Related to a PixelHunt, where finding that elusive clickable hotspot often devolves into just clicking everything until something happens. If the game tends to say "[[InformingTheFourthWall I Can't Use These Things Together]]" or "YouCantGetYeFlask", a player who is Trying Everything will likely get ''very'' [[DarthWiki/MostAnnoyingSound sick of hearing it]].

See also MillionToOneChance. Compare TalkToEveryone and CombinatorialExplosion, where the ''developers'' have the headache of coping with lots of items and only one way to do it. Related to a PixelHunt, where finding that elusive clickable hotspot often devolves into just clicking everything until something happens. If the game tends to say "[[InformingTheFourthWall I Can't Use These Things Together]]" or "YouCantGetYeFlask", a player who is Trying Everything will get ''very'' [[MostAnnoyingSound sick of hearing it]].

See also MillionToOneChance. Compare TalkToEveryone and CombinatorialExplosion, where the ''developers'' have the headache of coping with lots of items and only one way to do it. If the game tends to say "[[InformingTheFourthWall I Can't Use These Things Together]]" or "YouCantGetYeFlask", a player who is Trying Everything will get ''very'' [[MostAnnoyingSound sick of hearing it]].

* In the 4th episode of ''Series/KaizokuSentaiGokaiger'', after the previous episode, where the Gokaigers were granted a new power for their CombiningMecha by [[Series/MahouSentaiMagiranger Magi Red]], the Gokaigers try out the other Ranger Keys to see if they do anything. We only see them using the [[Series/JAKQDengekitai JAKQ]] and [[Series/BattleFeverJ Battle Fever]] keys, but it's implied that they tried all the other keys with no results, realizing that they have to be granted the new powers by the respective Sentai teams.

* In any game which has a numeric keypad (or similar combination lock) as an obstacle, brute-forcing it is usually a viable option unless the designers thought ahead and made the passcode prohibitively long or actually required the code to be found in the story first. This is especially true if the solution is split into parts; you only need enough parts to narrow it down to a reasonable cross section of answers.
** Played for laughs in ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'' when Chell and Wheatley accidentally reawaken [=GLaDOS=]. Wheatley tries to cancel the process, but when he finds out it requires a 6-character alphanumeric password, his solution is to just brute force it, all while a very angry [=GLaDOS=] is reassembling herself in the background. [[TheDitz Despite being an AI, he gets as far as "AAAAAC", only to realize that he skipped "AAAAAB".]]
** Also PlayedForLaughs in ''VideoGame/TheStanleyParable'' with the keypad in the office. You learn the code when The Narrator remarks "There's no way Stanley could know the code was 2-8-4-5", and he remarks it was amazing Stanley was able to figure it out just by trying everything. Even better is when you come back on a second playthrough and remember the code from ''before'' The Narrator tells you: he gets notably upset that you didn't even let him finish talking and forces you to listen to some new-age music for a moment to "calm down your anxiety".

[[folder: Comic Books]]
* One issue of ''Justice League Adventures'' had ComicBook/TheFlash attempting to disarm a bomb wired to a keypad that required a three-letter password. Being ''[[SuperSpeed The Flash]]'', he simply tries EVERY three-letter combination at lightning speed, starting from A-A-A, A-A-B, etc. [[spoiler:The disarm code turns out to be O-F-F.]]

[[folder: Film]]
* ''Film/MrBeansHoliday'': After Mr. Bean's antics cause a father to miss his son's train, and the next train skipped the stop his son was at, the father put the phone number of his hotel room in Cannes up to the window. Unfortunately, the last two numbers were blocked by his fingers. Mr. Bean's solution is to write down every double-digit number from 00 to 99 and call each completed phone number. Subverted, as father and son are reunited before the call was made (none were seen onscreen after 06).
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature]]
* In ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire'', Harry has to get into Dumbledore's office, but he doesn't know the password. He does know that the password is always some type of candy, so he rattles off the names of every popular brand he can think of, like "Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans" (then he remembers that Dumbledore doesn't like those, so that's clearly not right), "Chocolate Frog", and "Sugar Quill", before throwing up his arms in desperation and shouting, "Cockroach Cluster!". And ''that'' is the password, which causes the bemused Harry to say “Cockroach Cluster? I was only joking …”
* ''{{Literature/Idlewild}}'' presents the human race with a puzzle in the form of a DepopulationBomb disease. The only success was a crazy mishmash of genetic and sociological sampling from around the world, bioengineering a novel immune system, multiple sterile safehouses, tons of drugs, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV]]
* In the 4th episode of ''Series/KaizokuSentaiGokaiger'', after the previous episode, where the Gokaigers were granted a new power for their CombiningMecha by [[Series/MahouSentaiMagiranger Magi Red]], the Gokaigers try out the other Ranger Keys to see if they do anything. We only see them using the [[Series/JAKQDengekitai JAKQ]] and [[Series/BattleFeverJ Battle Fever]] keys, but it's implied that they tried all the other keys with no results, realizing that they have to be granted the new powers by the respective Sentai teams.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation]]
* In the ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' cartoon "Ali Baba Bunny", Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck tunnel into the cave of a wealthy sultan. Seeing this, the sultan’s guard Hassan tries to activate the password (which is, “Open Sesame”, naturally) only to realize he has forgotten it, so he rattles off several different S-words (“Uh...Open, sarsaparilla? Open, Saskatchewan? Open, septuagenarian? Open, saddle soap?”) before eventually getting it right.
* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' has the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who don't have their Cutie Marks yet. Since they're desperate to get their Marks, they try everything from paper authors, catapults, sports, chicken catchers and several other things to get their marks of adulthood. All with accompanying MadLibsCatchphrase of "CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS (Insert name of attempted job here)!"
* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'': In "A Better World", Flash tries to open a combination lock by entering all possible combinations at superspeed. Averted when Batman tells him to try his combination, guessing (correctly) that the AlternateUniverse Batman who set the lock might have used the same one.
* Averted in ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' when Dipper is trying to access the Author's laptop and, not knowing the password, tries every possible combination he can think of that's associated with the Author. Unfortunately, it turns out that too many failed attempts triggers the laptop's fail-safe and nearly erases all the data.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life]]
* Security experts refer to something that tries to guess passwords by trying all of them as a "dictionary attack" (i.e., try every word in the dictionary), or a more thorough "brute force attack" (try ''every'' possible combination of letters/digits/symbols/etc.). A similar method, called "rainbow table", consists of getting one's hands on an encrypted password and comparing it with a huge table of possible passwords and their encrypted equivalents.[[note]]This is because good encryption methods use a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapdoor_function "trapdoor function"]]: basically, even if you know the encryption key, you can't directly reverse the process without a different key, or a brute-force effort that dwarfs the rainbow-table approach.[[/note]] The exception to this is the one-time-pad cipher; if you try brute forcing a one-time-pad encryption, you end up with literally thousands to millions of interpretations, and no way to know which was the correct one (that is what the key is for).
** On a meta level, dedicated attackers will scout every possible opening on the system besides user credentials (and indeed there are often many; [[TheCon social engineering attacks]], cross-site scripting, known vulnerabilities for individual applications,...), then try breaking in through all of them, starting with the ones more likely to succeed or least likely to leave a trace.
** Some security systems counter this approach by freezing up if too many wrong guesses are entered and/or imposing a significant (and often increasing) time delay after each wrong guess.
* Websites that require this in order to navigate the site are known as having [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation "mystery meat navigation."]] MMN is a highly frowned-upon practice, as it can mislead users into believing that there is less content on the page than there really is.
[[/folder]]

Related to SolveTheSoupCans, where it's about situations that are impossible unless this is employed. Also related to SpeakFriendAndEnter, where the solution is so obvious that you TryEverything ''before'' you consider it.

*** How about wands? "I wonder what this does?" *Killer Elephant [[BalefulPolymorph is turned into a newt]]* "How about this one?" *The [[OneHitKill Death Ray]] hits the monster! The Death Ray bounces! The Death Ray hits you! ...[[HaveANiceDeath Do you want your possessions identifed?]]*

* ''VideoGame/StarTropics'': The robot in the submarine will at some point ask you to enter a frequency to continue. You cannot progress until you do. Have you lost the letter that came with the instruction manual and are instructed to put in water? Well, it's only a three digit code, you can just try them all one by one. [[spoiler:The answer is 747.]]