Most of you know the drill. For those of you who don't, here it is.

There are ten rules. I know this because I made them all up. I have them written down on a sheet of paper. You have to tell me what they are. You can do this by posting things that you think are rules, or by posting a comic that you think conforms to the rules. Then I'll tell you if you're right or not. The first person to demonstrate to me that they know what a given rule is will get a point. Whoever has the most points when all ten rules have been discovered gets first crack at moderating the next contest (and also gets called a geek by the rest of us).

I encourage you to make strips of your own and post them. I will be more generous with the hints in reponse to actual comics.

As has been done in some previous contests, one of the rules is a continuation of the one before it. I personally don't like doing that, but I was rather attached to one rule which I didn't feel it was fair to use without the prerequisite.

I'll start with the traditional four-strip opening. And then I'll go bash my brains out trying to write a long palindrome without the use of certain key consonants. Don't expect that one until tomorrow night.

Conforms to rules 1 - 5. Breaks rules 6 - 10.
23098

Breaks rules 1 - 5. Conforms to rules 6 - 10.
23099

Before you go nuts over everything that looks weird about that strip, visit the URL in the narration.

Conforms to all ten rules.
23100

Does not conform to any rules.
21898

I figured there was no reason to make a whole new comic that didn't follow the rules when I had plenty of old ones that would do.

Hahahaha! I don't know about any rules, but that comic kicked ass!

23193

23194

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Hahahaha! I don't know about any rules, but that comic kicked ass!

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Nice job fucking up my head. All the rules I thought I was following were from 1-5. I didn't think I knew 7 or 10.

23248

23256

All your *BEEP!*
Follows: 8
Breaks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10

Eye Eat Paste
Follows: 1, 2, 7, 10
Breaks: 3, 5, 6, 8, 9
Close Enough: 4

You still know what rule 4 is. You probably stumbled over 10. I'm still convinced that you know what 1 and 7 are, but maybe you're just getting lucky. You're probably very close on 2. And you probably have no idea why the first strip follows rule 8. 8 might actually be the toughest one to figure out, though it's one of the easiest to do by accident.

This is fun, even if there's only one contestant. Come on, everyone else, steal Gabe's victory while he's still relatively clueless!

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This is fun, even if there's only one contestant. Come on, everyone else, steal Gabe's victory while he's still relatively clueless!

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Maybe this will help. It's fully compliant.

23295

As a bonus, this strip actually complies with rule 5 twice, rule 7 three times, rule 8 twice (three times if you're Dr. Pedantic), and rule 9 twice. (You could argue that it complies with some other rules multiple times as well, but so have most of the other strips, and it's the nature of those rules to be in continuing use throughout a strip.) As a trade-off, I'm being a real bastard about rule 4 in this one. But I assure you that it does follow rule 4. Consult a reference book if you doubt it.

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I'll tell you up front that "Reprint the lyrics of a Clutch song" is not one of the rules. Way to suck up, though.

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I was just looking at their page and thought, why should I waste my time coming up with dialoge?

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I know why 'Eye Eat Paste' doesn't quite fit the bill for #4. I was just sending you a message.

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I know why 'Eye Eat Paste' doesn't quite fit the bill for #4. I was just sending you a message.

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23434

This Contest Hurts My Head
Follows: 4, 5, 6
Breaks: 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10

You probably know rule 6. If you knew rule 5, I think you'd have better uses for it.

I really didn't mean to make this so difficult. I was actually afraid it would be too easy, and put in red herring or two to throw people off. I see I needn't have bothered. (Oddly, you don't seem to be going for the herrings, either.)

I think this last strip may have been making a stab at rule 3. If it helps at all, I'll tell you that rule 3 actually specifies something that can't happen, rather than something that must. I guess you could express it either way, though.

I'm thinking up another strip right now. Hopefully it'll help.

It's always easier when you're making the rules. :)

I think one thing that makes rules easy or hard is their type. They can be roughly categorized into two chunks.

There are the basic rules, that are generally governed by things like alphabetization, numerical order, postion in the forms on the comic creator page, etc. Things that a person with with no specialized knowledge would be able to sort out through logic and common sense.

Then there are the obscure rules, which call for the puzzlegoer to have some prior knowledge. I assumed that US presidents would be pretty easy to see, but obviously it was harder for DexX. DexX thought Beatles lyrics were easy to spot, but it was a pain in the ass for me.

So how many of your rules are the confusing kind?

And since we can both post comics and guess, I'm going to give guessing a try... I'll save the single rule that I'm absolutely sure of, since it's kind of fun when you find it. But here are my brainstorms for everything else...

Speaking of patterns, this one jumped out right off the bat. Since all four of your first comics followed it, I was sure it was a rule and not just a mistake.

I thought the background had to fall alphabetically between both the character groups and the characters.

Good:
WIGU < Psycho > Props
WIGURube < Psycho > Phone

Bad:
Threereasons < Canyon > Dexx
Feetforears < Canyon > Satan

Everything was great up until the comic about Death and Gore, which blew that theory out of the water.

I think you need to use at least one prop.

After the first couple comics, I thought you needed to use the word you/your like 8 or 9 times, hence the 'All your base' comic to see if that was true.

Name of an assassin, or someone that's been assassinated?

Name a background?

A character from the Dexx group must appear in the right side of some of the panels.

Name a game? (This one was stretching. You used the word 'magicky' and then 'half my life'. Magic, Half Life. I know, thinking too much...

That's about all I got for now.

Conforms to all ten rules.
23444

I tried to get a good mix of detail-focused rules and content-focused rules. I also tried to make it so that it should be easy enough to do a little internet reasearch if you don't have the requisite knowledge.

I would say that about half of the rules fall into each category, but the distinction is blurry in some cases, so I don't want to confuse anyone by giving actual numbers.

I think two rules require previous knowledge. One you've got (see below). The other may be more obscure than I first thought. I'm trying to make it suggest itself.

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Speaking of patterns, this one jumped out right off the bat. Since all four of your first comics followed it, I was sure it was a rule and not just a mistake.

I thought the background had to fall alphabetically between both the character groups and the characters.

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No, I just like DexX's characters.

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Aha! I think I know. Is it rule 10?

Yup.

Bonus.

When I was looking up assassinations, I actually found an entire page with a calendar of famous world assassinations, chock full of people that bought it. But now I can't find it.

Rule #10 - At least one character must be holding something.

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Rule #10 - At least one character must be holding something.

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A weapon?

Rule 10: At least one character wielding a weapon must appear.

So. Should we bother continuing this? There's only one person guessing rules, it's taken a few days to get only four of them, and I think the rules that are left will be even harder than those that have already been guessed. I've been enjoying writing strips that supposedly give hints about the rules, but... I don't know. Seems kind of silly. Let me know if you just want me to post what the rules were and be done with it.

I've probably spent more time than I ought have trying to work them out, and I'm not getting anywhere. You're too smart for me, you evil bastard.

You can try making some more obvious clues, give some big hints, etc. That might work. But if you want, you can post the rules and satisfy my curiosity.

G

Well, I decided that if I couldn't think of a good strip by the time I got home, I'd just post the rules. I couldn't, so here they are.

1: At least one prop must appear.
2: A character must talk to that prop. Talking to someone/something else via the prop is acceptable.
3: No panel in the strip may take place on our planet earth. The strip must make this reasonably unambiguous.
4: The initial letters of all text boxes, when combined in order (narration, left dialogue, right dialogue, panels from left to right), must spell a common English word. "Common" means I can find it in the dictionary.
5: The text must include the name of one of the seven deadly sins in some form.
6: The text must include the name of the victim or perpetrator of a famous successful assassination.
7: The text must include a formal title, such as Mr., Professor, or President.
8: Some text box must include three immediately consecutive punctuation marks.
9: The strip must incorporate a bizarre, inappropriate, awkward, or otherwise bad simile, metaphor, or analogy.
10: At least one character wielding a weapon must appear.

Rule 8 is the only one I really feel bad about. It was the last one I made, and I was just trying to get the contest started without waiting another day. Some of the others I was afraid would be too obvious. I guess I should have expected that what's obvious to me isn't to other people.

When I designed the rules, I tried to plan them so that one could follow them all and still craft a strip that would be funny and coherent in its own right. Perhaps I did too good a job of that.

Words which were used as one of the seven deadly sins were: anger, lust, avarice, pride, lazy (laziness = sloth), wrath. I guess my Catholic upbringing may have made these words more significant to me than to other people. But then, there was that movie a few years back. I was trying to think of a way to use "gluttony" or "covetousness"; I figured those would suggest themselves.

When I saw that "Uber Squirrel" contained the phrase "Mr. Doctor, sir", I was sure rule 7 had been guessed. Either of those three would have satisfied it.

This was fun, even if it didn't ultimately amount to anything. If someone else wants to start another one, I'll play. But take a lesson from me and don't make the rules too hard.

Hey Mr. evil_d,

I just wanted to call in from my home planet and say to you through my computer ...

Sorry I couldn't get myself up to participate, but I looked over your rules, and that was a fine set. I did enjoy poring over your compliant strips in retrospect.

So don't think your work was in vain. I'm putting down my knife and thinking peaceful thoughts -- I'm right now like John Lennon lying naked next to Yoko.

They were good rules. Had I been given several more weeks and a slightly larger brain I might have come up with more.

Seriously, writing these rules is a bitch. No matter what you think is gonna work out great ends up being too easy or too hard.

But at least it's fun.