Hello all. I have previously attempted contacting the moderators regarding the rules of the 9 hole runs. The current world records for both the Tri-Planet Open and Sparkathalon Cup both abort all 9 holes; however, the rules state:

Beat the cup as quickly as possible. Timing starts when you click on the cup and ends when the ball goes through the final ring.

My interpretation of this is that you must complete the last hole the normal way (ie: not aborted), since the clock should otherwise not be stopped. I also believe this to be more interesting and fun than aborting all 9 holes.

I just started to run these for fun but I understood the terms after watching the top runs and that they created a 9 holes and 9 holes aborted for various reasons I guess this isn't what they intended at first but people decided to quit the holes 1 by 1 and the moderators didn't realize the mistake they made in the rules but they let it slide giving more of a challenge instead of just adding a new CAT but although I could be wrong I haven't asked them myself about this.

Admittedly, I'm not sure. I wrote these categories years ago and haven't really looked at them until this recent batch of submissions, so I guess I never noticed how ambiguous the rules are. I'm open to suggestions. I agree that, as the rules are currently written, you should have to play hole 9. Though if we're open to changing the rules/categories, there doesn't seem to be much point in having a category where one hole can't be aborted but the others can. Thus, I would say we could have "any%" featuring all aborts (a rather boring category, but if it's the game's any% then it is what it is) and then the existing Abortless category which requires fully playing each hole. How does that sound?