Katherina Walshe-Grey via agora-official [2026-04-06 19:38]:
> Nilrem wrote:
> > I CoE the following statement:
> > -----
> > Even if 4st had a Lime Ribbon, the Assessor would not meet the cashing
> > conditions of the promise titled "4st's Lime Ribbon Deal".
> > -----
>
> Nilrem wrote:
> > Hilariously, I have now made the opposite mistake of one of my first
> > game actions. I CFJ the statement that I attempted to CoE in the
> > previous message.
> >
> > Surely I will get them straight one day.
>
> This is CFJ 4142. I assign it to juan.
I assign CFJ 4142 the following judgment:
{
This one is interesting. The rule governing promises (R2618) is apparently
contradictory, or at least it creates an unexpected effect based on a
bad assumption.
Nilrem's arguments seem plausible, since the rule indeed defines:
{
A promise's owner is referred to as its bearer.
}
So, since the owner was the Library at the time of the attempted cashing,
it would be its bearer.
However!, the rule also says this:
{
In a promise's text, "the bearer" and "the casher" (or the like)
both refer to the player who cashed the promise
}
So, inside a promise, the expression “the bearer” has a different
meaning than what the first part of the rule describes. This is not a
contradiction per se, but it is weird.
The assumption seems to be that a player who would be cashing the
promise would be its owner. ais523 explains the historical origin of
the assumption:
> [This definition] is because players used to temporarily gain posession
> of a promise while cashing it, even from the Library, and the definition
> was added to avoid old promises breaking when the rules were changed
> so that promises were cashed directly from the Library.
There is another problem, however. The definition does not say that
“the bearer” refer to the player who “is trying to cash the
promise” or “has anounced e is cashing the promise”; instead,
it says “the player who *cashed* the promise”.
At the moment of evaluation of the promise's text, has the player already
cashed it? It's not clear. The definition of what cashing means is stated
via the expression “by doing so”, implying that the effect of acting
on behalf of the promise's creator happens *during* cashing of the promise.
But this is clearly not the intended meaning of this clause. The clause
is there to allow promise writers to refer to whoever will be cashing
em. A better interpretation, that follows common sense, and the best
interest of the game, besides the historical usage of the rule, is
that the definition works as if stating that a promise's bearer, in the
context of a promise's text, is indeed the player who is cashing it.
I recommend the legislature to rework this rule to avoid the awkward
phrasing, and the double meaning of the term, but anyhow I judge this
CFJ as FALSE. If 4st had a Lime Ribbon, the Assessor would indeed meet
the cashing conditions of the promise in question.
P.S.: this judgment does not require any change in game state if 4st
indeed had no Lime Ribbon.
}
--
juan
Judge in the case
