Looks like we picked up some extra loopty loops during an update from NetBSD back in 1998.
I sanity checked against NetBSD to make sure this matches their source. Tim. Index: io.c =================================================================== RCS file: /cvs/src/games/phantasia/io.c,v retrieving revision 1.9 diff -u -p -r1.9 io.c --- io.c 10 Jan 2016 13:35:09 -0000 1.9 +++ io.c 29 Apr 2021 00:20:18 -0000 @@ -324,7 +324,6 @@ getanswer(char *choices, bool def) alarm(0); /* make sure alarm is off */ for (loop = 3; loop; --loop) - for (loop = 3; loop; --loop) /* try for 3 times */ { if (setjmp(Timeoenv) != 0)