Share some good examples of clever rule lawyering. Both real life and fictional examples are permitted.
For example:
In Ender’s Game, Ender figures out they can shoot their own legs and use them as shields.
Or, in baseball, perhaps the invention of the bunt, the curve ball, and the reverse pitch?
I don’t see how either bunts or curveballs could be considered rules lawyering. And the reverse pitch is just cool.
There’s a difference between taking advantage of the rules to do something clever, and endless nitpickery of the rules to the detriment of the game. IMHO, the latter is rules lawyering, not the former.
Want to see rules lawyering? Become a pilot and deal with the FAA in the most minor dispute.
Roger Neilson was a hockey coach his entire life. He was infamous for finding and exploiting loopholes in the rules(which were subsequently fixed). Some examples:
In hockey, a penalty shot is over if the goaltender touches the puck(unless its momentum subsequently carries into the goal). Neilson realized that the rules would allow him to substitute a defenceman for the goalkeeper, who could skate right up to the attacking player to tip the puck ever so slightly to end the penalty shot.
In hockey, when a player is serving a penalty their team plays a player short for the duration of the penalty. Two penalties will cause you to lose two skaters. That’s the limit – an additional penalty does not start to tick down until the first penalty ends. Neilson’s team was clinging to a 1-goal lead very late in the game, and then his team was called for two penalties. Neilson send out a full 5-man line. Everytime his team played the puck the referee would call an additional penalty against his team for too many men on the ice, but as they were already down two men for the rest of the game this didn’t hurt them at all.
There was a training exercise in the Air Force where officers would be divided up into flights of about 16 and told to accomplish a goal. This was pretty common – you’d be given a goal, a time limit, and some absurd rules and told to do your best, and then you’d all sit around and post-mortem your inevitable failures.
The one exercise that comes to mind was an exercise where the rules stated that
It was like Towers of Hanoi, only more complex, and we had split our team wrong to begin with, meaning we’d never get it done in the time limit. We had plenty of people in Zones Y and Z, but no way to get them to W in time. The inability to talk meant that we couldn’t do any planning. Then one officer said “Hey, I think I’ll just walk over to zone W.”
The observer said “No talking! Go to zone W.”
The officer went to Zone W, and then said “Hey Lt. Smith - want to join me in Zone W?”
The reply: “Sure!”
He asked two others to join him and we completed the exercise with about a minute on the clock. I’m told that when they run that exercise now, there’s a 30 second penalty for talking.
In a soccer tournament in the Caribbean in 1994, Grenada were playing Barbados. Barbados needed to win by two goals to advance to the next round, otherwise, Grenada would advance. But there was a strange rule in this tournament that if a team won in overtime, it would be scored as a two-goal win.
So, Barbados were ahead 2-1 with seven minutes left to play. They realized they probably wouldn’t score in the time left, and would have a better chance to advance by tying the game in regular time and playing for the win in overtime.
So they kicked the ball into their own goal.
This put Grenada in the position of needing to score a goal on either end of the field, and Barbados trying to defend both goals.
The Grenadans couldn’t score; Barbados won in overtime and advanced.
While I recognize the utter brilliance of that tactic, the idea of a hockey team skating around on the ice with no possibility of being punished should strike fear into the hearts of peace loving people everywhere.
I don’t get it. If Grenada put the ball into their own goal, wouldn’t that count as a goal for Barbados, which, because it was in overtime, would go down as a two-goal win for Barbados, thus giving Barbados what they needed to advance and knock Grenada out of the tournament?
ETA: Oh, wait, never mind. I get it now; Grenada was trying to score at either end while still in regulation play. I thought they were trying to score at either end in overtime. Neat!
Doubly neat because Barbados, having cleverly kicked the own goal, created a doubly difficult & very wierd situation for themsleves (defending both ends) until time ran out.
I wonder if they realized they’d be in that pickle before they kicked the own goal.
Or was it one of those “Golly we’re smart … Oh shit, what have we done???” moments?
If they really thought about it & were clever enough to kick the own goal with just seconds remaining that’d be really neat.
Weird - I was discussing this just last month with some friends. Never knew there was a term for it.
I posited the theory that “baseball is the only team sport in which you can’t use a penalty for your own good.” Note that a foul ball isn’t a penalty, and spiking a guy isn’t a penalty unless you get called on it, in which case it is not for your own good. Running out of the baseline does you no good either because if you get caught you’re out.
I hadn’t watched much basketball until the Cavs were in the playoffs this year. Fouling - causing your team to be penalized - is a huge part of the strategy of the game.
In football, getting a penalty is often a strategy in the late minutes of the game.
I am not 100% sure but I believe in soccer and hockey, causing a penalty is a part of the strategy of the game. I think the above answers cover those sports(?)
No one I talked to was a tennis player, but we surmised there has got to be some sort of strategy involving foot fouls or hitting the ball out of bounds that would be beneficial to the “rule breaker.”
We also agreed bowling and golf don’t count because you play against yourself. You can’t really do anything to another player to help your own game.
What about cricket and rugby?
Are there actually any intentionally-induced penalties in baseball that can work FOR your team? Are there any penalties at all?
In baseball, sometimes a coach will intentionally yell at an ump, kick dirt on their shoes, to try to get thrown out of the game in an attempt to fire up the team.
Sacrifice fly.
How is a sacrifice fly breaking the rules of the game? What is the penalty for the rules infraction?
It doesn’t break any rules. Your team gets an out (which is bad), but it gets a run (which is really, really good).
In baseball The pitcher could stick his fingers in his mouth four times, which would be four automatic balls and work as an intentional walk, which is often done(though not achieved that way) as strategy.
Come to think of it I wonder why they don’t do that, it would cut down on the chances of any passed ball accident on the intentional pitches.
A bunch of us sat down to play Monopoly a few years ago and one guy made a big deal about “Let’s play be the Official Rules”. I think he thought that just meant no money in the middle to be claimed when you land on Free Parking.
I knew differently and proceeded to play By The Rules. This isn’t my proudest moment but some things I did include:
When someone decided not to buy a property they landed on I pointed out that the rules make the bank auction it off.
This gave me my first couple of sets which I proceeded to develop, strictly by the rules. I put four houses on everything and no hotels. The rules state that a limited number of houses are provided in the game and when they are all gone that’s it, and I bought almost every house, leaving just a few, leading to…
The rules also state that you must have four houses on a property before you can build a hotel - you can’t just pay five times the cost of a house and slap a hotel on there, and with me owning most of the houses, nobody else could put more than three anywhere. They were stuck.
I have matured so much since those days.
The Snopes article says that three minutes were left.
This leads me to a soccer question. Do teams make an effort to keep track of stoppage time? Do they assign some guy to click a stopwatch or something? Assuming that stoppage time was added to this match, I don’t know if I should think that the Barbados team scored the own goal just a bit too early or that it was smart to play it safe.
I just remembered an instance of this in NFL football.
I’m pretty sure it was the 1999 season. The Tennessee Titans, with quarterback Neil O’Donnell, were ahead by 3 (I can’t remember against whom). It was fourth down, and there was something like 0:15 on the clock. The Titans had the ball somewhere around their own 30.
The obvious choice would be to punt here, and trust your special teams. Instead, the Titans “went for it,” but not really. O’Donnell took the snap, then began running backward. He ran back into the end zone, watching the clock the whole time, and as the defense was running toward him, he saw that time had run out. So he stepped out of bounds in the end zone.
Result: Safety. Opposing team gets two points, the game is over, and Tennessee wins by one. It was cool.
That’s not rules-lawyering, that’s playing the game the way it’s designed to be played. Ain’t your fault if widespread reluctance to be bothered to learn the right rules means that most people know neither them nor the strategy to follow. Cornering the house market is a valid and skillful tactic and it’s the other players’ fault for not playing to prevent your using it. 
Not only that, it’s monopolistic.