I second this... but I'm a bit torn. IMO it's not a wild glitch like the glasses run, but it still skips a significant amount of dialogue and menuing along the way. Maybe a sphynx% category would help keep the Sphynx strat legit, but keep it separate from people who choose to run the game "normally"?
To elaborate - the broom trick:
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Cuts down on the number of items you have to grab, thus cuts down on the number of text boxes you have to skip through, and reduces some time spent moving the cursor around the screen to grab said items.
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Cuts down on like 90% of the Sphynx dialogue - including the fact that you'd actually have to read some of it to figure out what item to show it
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Cuts down on menuing as you have to flip through to find the item it needs.
It's a pretty significant shortcut that (IMO) takes advantage of a glitch, since you're never asked the riddle, and the item never changes from the broom in this run.
I've been slowly working on the Shadowgate run, and plan on doing glitchless. So, if this changes at all (broom trick removed from glitchless), I'd like to know.
Also on the topic of glitches - you can open the "Star Map" without grabbing the star if you "open" right at the very bottom edge of the map (or the brick just below the map). This also feels at least a bit glitchy to me.
Again, these glitches aren't anything near as extreme as the true "glitch" run, but still exploiting whoopsies in the code nonetheless.
My thoughts concerning the Sphinx and the Broom:
A glitch can be defined as a problem or oversight in code affecting the function of a program or otherwise producing results that were not intended by the developer.
The Sphinx in Shadowgate functions as follows (from the SDA Knowledge Base): "The riddle you'll receive from the sphinx is chosen from six items based on the frame you speak to the sphinx. This makes it incredibly difficult to reliably get a specific riddle; however, the current question remains the same until you speak to the sphinx while his question is marked as answered. You can answer the current question correctly multiple times. The default value is the broom. This means you can enter the Sphinx's room, present the broom, and pass the sphinx without triggering the question. "
Bearing the above definition of a glitch in mind, answering the Sphinx with the Broom without talking to him first isn't necessarily a glitch since he is functioning the way the developers intended at the code level. You're simply exploiting his behavior by not giving him a chance to randomize the correct answer.
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Concerning the opening the Star Map, I feel like this is just a question of hitboxes, with the Star Map's hitbox being just slightly larger/lower than the Star's, enabling you to click it without picking up the Star first.
Also from the SDA Knowledge Base:
"The glasses are the only known item that can be taken multiple times from the inventory. Depending on what's been triggered in the game (based on taken items and events), you can reach an area of memory that can trigger certain events or allow you to reach items from different rooms."
In this case, being able to take the Glasses multiple times is a programming oversight, and the player is reaching pretty far outside of what the developers intended and mucking with memory by doing so.
If anyone is still concerned about this, I don't think there's any reason to classify what's happening here as a glitch. It's sort of like answering the riddle before it's asked; the question was already in mind, and answering it before you hear it doesn't make your answer any less incorrect.
This doesn't really change anything either, other than the fact that we don't have to speak and hear the riddle. If you had to ask for the riddle, the speedrun wouldn't change; we would just end up resetting 5 out of 6 attempts, which would definitely be worth it to save the time it would otherwise take to pick up other items used only for the riddle.
Things like this happen in NES games all the time, and while it could arguably be described as a programming oversight, I don't think there's any reason to exclude it from the glitchless category.
