[HPforGrownups] OFF LIMITS SPOILER for Ultimate and Last Bragging Rights Contest

[Random832]

No: HPFGUIDX 171821

TK Kenyon wrote:
> As many have noted, there appears to be a SPOILER in today's 
> Guardian, as reported on HPANA, Mugglenet, et al. 
> 
> Anything relating to this SPOILER is now off-limits for the purposes 
> of the contest. That means any interpretations, notes on the Chapter 
> title, guesses about the identity of other character, anything. 

Whoa, there!

Just for a comparison...

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 > Current Off-Limits Spoilers:
 > -- SPOILER: Kreacher will be in DH. (David Yates, interview.) (Note:
 > because we are pretty sure that Kreacher will figure at least
 > somewhat prominently in DH, any predictions about his presence on a
 > cover will also be worth 0 points.)

Now, predicting "The first chapter title will be 'The Dark Lord 
Ascending'" would be worth zero points by analogy to this.

However, you've banned interpretations and guesses about the identity of 
the other character, which would be equivalent to banning any guesses as 
to HOW Kreacher will be involved. If I guess "The character appearing 
with Snape in the first chapter is Aberforth Dumbledore", that is 
equivalent to predicting, say (assuming this wasn't part of the 
spoiler), "Harry will summon Kreacher to help deal with one of the 
horcruxes other than the locket". which is NOT, to my understanding, 
off-limits. Why does this spoiler have so much stronger of a ban than 
the other ones?

It goes without saying that it would be completely unreasonable to 
discard entire entries based on the presence of references to such 
spoilers, rather than simply assigning zero points to specific 
predictions as with the other off-limits spoilers, but you haven't made 
it clear this is what you meant.

--Random832