----- Original message ----- > Do you really think the Scrabble-word rule is unilaterally too hard? > Because this is exactly what I'm talking about. There are people (myself > maybe included, if I knew ahead of time that this was Intense Zendo) who > could guess that rule, and have fun doing it. It is patently ridiculous > to legislate it out of existence. It is a bad rule for the majority of > Zendo players, yes, but as previously discussed the Prime rule is also a > bad rule for many, many Zendo players, and yet a perfectly normal, even > easy, one for many others. Who are you to impose your beliefs about what > is 'too hard' on everyone else? I'm not trying to impose my viewpoint on anyone else. How could I do that? I'm simply expressing an opinion. In a very important sense, the published rules for Zendo are not important; it's the rules in any one set of players' heads when they play that matter. those might be different through common consent, through cultural differences with the people that wrote the rules, or any number of other reasons. It doesn't matter, as long as they enjoy the game. Searching for the 'right' way to employ the One True Rules has little pragmatic value. So, first, if a set of players feels that a certain type of koan rule is outside the spirit of the game, then I think that they should make a house rule banning it. Second, if it seems likely that the majority of players will employ such a house rule, then in an ideal world, maybe the written rules should change too. That doesn't stop advanced players playing the game any way they please. How could it? Is the scrabble rule a rule that should be invalid in the written rules? All I can say is, it is for me. > If you are planning to spill > ketchup on your yellow shirt halfway through and start marking koans > with red in them differently, that's a big no-no. Yes, I stand corrected. Thank you. The rule is only technically illegal because of the phrasing; it's trivial to rephase it legally. And, as others have pointed outranks, how the rule is phrased is not actually part of the game.