[Cory]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

It's not our job to fathom the intent of the rules, only to follow them. To drag out some well-worn sports cliches, the football world didn't take to the forward pass right away, and the racing world was stunned when Colin Chapman built rear-engined, lightweight cars to compete with the heavier, front-engined cars of the time. The most famous example is probably in the America's Cup regatta when a New Zealand team challenged Dennis Connor using a "big boat" following the original deed of grant for the America's Cup, despite the fact that the regatta had been conducted with 12-meter sloops since World War II. Connor responded with another tradition-breaking solution by entering a big catamaran. Sailors are still grumbling about the regatta, saying that both the Kiwis and Connor were gaming the system. They weren't -- the were using the rules as written to optimize their chances of winning, just like Chapman and the pioneers of modern football.

It's one thing to lawyer the rules -- which I take to mean fixing on a small discrepancy in the rules to win at something which you would not otherwise win, and taking advantage of the opportunities inherent in an open-class mechanical competition (which is why I keep thinking of sailing and automotive examples, I suppose -- remember winged keels, rear-engined top-fuel dragsters, and the Ford GT40s in Le Mans?).

I can't speak to the intricacies of <G22> as it relates to a stationary robot passing a ball around the quadrants. Given the definition of "CROSSING," my head throbs just thinking about it. This could easily have been prevented, however, if the GDC had just said that the Lane Marker did not exist underneath the Lane Divider, as no one would then have attempted this strategy. I think by making the Lane Marker extend the whole length of the arena, the GDC was practically asking for someone to build a stationary ball-twirling robot.

I think it's really a moot point, because as another Q&A response pointed out (can't find it right now--forums.usfirst.org appears to be down for me), the GDC intended for the ball to be dropped from the height of the overpass, which 190 clearly does not do. That's pretty cut and dry to me.