We thought this one (#10) was worth adding our two cents to, certainly the italics below are only our opinion, the rules themselves were directly copied from the Q and A page. We would be interested in your interpretations as well.
10 - EXTENDING TO BASE IS NOT REACHING BASE
"The 5th part of Rule 17 was offered as a friendly relief for robots which were engineered to return to Base, but needed a break upon entering, due to kid excitement or a bad angle. But in the face of growing over-interpretation of that rule change, you are informed here that the term "reaches Base" as used in Rules 17 and 30 shall only apply at the completion of an actual/obvious trip to Base. Extensions which drop, uncoil, shoot, telescope, etc., for the obvious purpose of avoiding the penalty for truly failing or not even trying to engineer a trip to Base will be treated like tethers, and not considered part of the robot."
The Inventioneers: In Inventioneers-speak, we interpret this to mean that if a part of your robot crosses the plane(s) of base as it is attempting to return to base, the entire robot and its contents (any retrievables in its possession) are considered in base. If the robot is just extending a piece/part/arm/beam/ into base without purposefully trying to get to base, the robot will still be considered active and a touch penalty will be incurred and any retrievables/deliverables in the robot's possession will not be considered in base.
Other new Q and A's:
8 - ADDING TO MISSION MODELS
Your hands can only operate in Base to add pieces to models. 2009 Rule Change A does not give you any new freedom to touch models outside Base. That would violate Rules 17 and 27.
9 - AT LEAST ONE DRIVE WHEEL OR TREAD
Where drive wheels or treads need to touch, at least one is all you need. This can be seen in at least one of the scoring diagrams labeled "scoring example."
11 - PARALLEL LOOPS
The loops on the southeast wall are placed parallel to the wall, as shown in the pictures. Those of you who thought this was obvious (95%) were right. Those of you who recognized that this missing text detail could cleanly have justified fields being set randomly were also right. So if you roll your eyes at Q&As like this one, remember, they're for your protection!
12 - BROKEN CRASH TEST FIGURE
Since any part of "A" touching "B" counts as "A" touching "B," understand that separated parts from your crash test figure touching the mat (example: the arm falls off) will cause a no-score for the crash test figure mission.
