[Jon Stratis]

Look at it from the intent/spirit of the rules. There's nothing ruling against having an appendage that covers your bumper - in fact, such an appendage is pretty much necessary to manipulate the bridge, which is part of the game design. If that covers your team number on that side, its still visible on the bumpers on the other sides.

As for R35, the GDC is really going for readability. As a thought experiment, lets imagine the GDC hasn't been as picky about the numbers as they have been. You get to competition and teams 20 and 2020 are both there. Team 20 decided they wanted to display their number on both sides of their ball gatherer so its equally visible from multiple angles and for aesthetics, especially if a manipulator is lowered between them. Team 2020 decided they wanted to split their number on both sides of their ball gatherer, so it wasn't squished on one side, and for aesthetics. Now, looking at the front of the robot, the team numbers look identical - 20 on the left, and 20 on the right. How do the refs or scouters know which is which at a brief glance?

The whole intent of the bumper team number rules is to ensure that the numbers are readable and teams won't be confused. It helps the refs on the field, it helps the scouters in the stands, and it helps the friends/family that come to cheer your robot on.

If you have an appendage that blocks your team number on one side of the robot, and you know that appendage is going to be deployed most of the match, you'll likely want to put your team number above the bumpers on the robot somewhere - R35, and the GDC's quoting it in the Q&A should only apply to bumpers, not to what's displayed on the robot - anything displayed on the robot is a non-functional decoration, and the only real limits on those are that it can't interfere with other teams vision detection..