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* The International Obfuscated C Code Contest added a rule in 1995 that required all submissions to have source code at least one byte in length. Why? In 1994, "the world's smallest [[wikipedia:Quine (computing)|self-replicating program]]" won an award for "Worst Abuse of the Rules" by being zero bytes in size. Another rule, banning machine-dependent code, was added after the first winner in 1984 wrote the entire main program as a block of PDP-11 machine code.
* Several ad hoc laws arguably fall under this trope, especially those which are quickly struck down by the country's respective supreme court.
** This applies to the US Constitution; for example, the Eleventh was passed to fix a loophole in Article III which allowed residents of one state to sue other states in federal court when states were normally immune from suit. The people suing
*** The 16th Amendment is another example. Federal income taxes had always been permitted under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17, and had even been ruled to be "indirect" taxes not subject to apportionment as early as 1875. However, one really really wonky 5-4 Supreme Court decision declared taxes on income ''derived from property'' to be equivalent to a tax on the value of the property itself, and therefore a direct tax subject to apportionment. The 16th Amendment was drafted specifically to plug that loophole and re-classify all income taxes as indirect taxes regardless of the income's source.
** There's a law in the UK which specifically bans the operation of a hand-held digital voice recorder while operating a motor-vehicle. Can't help but get the feeling this was only enacted due to someone being a wise-arse with a particularly powerful police officer.
** In Canadian law, it's illegal to give alcohol to a moose. You have to wonder...<ref>That's perfectly reasonable. [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/drunk-elk-sweden_n_3936590 You do ''not'' want to be anywhere near a drunk moose.]</ref>
** If stating what a law does sounds ridiculous (such as "you can't put an ice cream sandwich in your back pocket"), it's probably one of these. The given example came about because of horse theft, which is a crime (understandable, since it's theft). If an animal wanders onto your property, it's yours. So if you want a free horse, all you have to do is bait it in a
* Even science and math have been known at various times to have Obvious Rule Patches. A couple of the famous ones:
** Euclid's ''Elements'', which was '''the''' geometry textbook for 2,000 years, begins by assuming some axioms and postulates that are obvious enough to make a solid
** Betrand Russell essentially broke set theory with his [[wikipedia:Russell's paradox|paradox]]: does "the set of all sets that don't contain themselves" contain itself? To escape this paradox, mathematicians had to put restrictions on what constituted a set. The current system basically says ''no'' set can contain itself—anything big enough to do that is too big to be a set, and has to be a "class" or some such. Some mathematicians find this unsatisfying, and the debate over whether there's a better solution continues.
*** The [[wikipedia:Cantor's diagonal argument|underlying nature]] of Russell's paradox unfortunately indicates that any better solution will ''also'' need to be logically "patched".
** Should the number 1 be counted as a [[wikipedia:Prime number|prime number]]? There's a case to be made either way, and in fact it was widely considered prime until quite recently, per the classic definition ("a number whose only factors are itself and 1"). But 1 doesn't act like a prime in most of the ways we need primes to act; in particular, it has to be left out if we want the [[wikipedia:Fundamental theorem of arithmetic|Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic]] to work. Thus we now define primality in ways that are less intuitive but exclude 1, such as "a number with exactly two factors" (and hence, 0 is right out).
* In 2008 when the State of Nebraska tried to implement a [[wikipedia:Safe-haven law|
* In 2010, the polar bear was granted the status of Threatened under the Endangered Species Act... with a rider attached by Secretary of the Interior stating that the bear's new status couldn't be used to sue oil companies or greenhouse gas emitters (arguably, the two biggest threats to the species). The environmental activist organizations that had planned to do just that were not amused.▼
* In many places, there are obsolete, oddly specific, and/or downright weird laws that are still on the books, many of which are clearly patches created due to some [[Noodle Incident]] or another. One has to wonder what prompted lawmakers in San Francisco to prohibit [https://web.archive.org/web/20141202024029/http://www.dumblaws.com/laws/united-states/california?page=80 elephants from strolling down Market Street unless they're on a leash or wiping one's car with used underwear.]▼
* The [[wikipedia:World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction|World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction]] is an extremely prestigious award intended for short stories, but was originally only defined as "speculative fiction under 10,000 words". That is, until 1991, when the judges selected [[Neil Gaiman]] and Charles Vess' "A Midsummer's Night Dream" issue of [[The Sandman]], which (horror of horrors) ''[[What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?|is a comic book]]''. The World Fantasy Convention sniffily [[Executive Meddling|changed the rules]] almost immediately, relegating any future graphic novel submissions to the Special Award: Professional category. This means the ''[[The Sandman]]'' is the only comic book that ever has or ever will win this particular award.▼
** According to Gaiman, "It wasn't like closing the stable door after the horse had gotten out, it was like closing the stable door after the horse had gotten out and won the Kentucky Derby."▼
* In 2011, UK supermarket chain Tesco ran a promotion that if whatever they had happened to be cheaper at its competitor Asda, they will pay you double the difference (e.g., an item that costs 8 pounds but is only 5 at Asda would earn you 6 pounds). However, the difference in prices could be big enough that shoppers would get back more money than they spent. Naturally, many [[Genre Savvy|savvy]] shoppers exploited this by finding products they didn't even need but potentially gave them the biggest profit and using that to do their actual grocery shopping. Tesco had since put the difference cap to 20 pounds.▼
* In 2009 a large German electronics chain ran a promotion where you could buy any product without the Value Added Tax (currently 19%). It turned out, however, that a company can't just waive the VAT, they had to pay it
=== Literature ===▼
* In ''[[Ender's Game]]'', Ender's final battle as commander pits his Dragon Army against two armies combined. Ender discards all combat strategy and has his boys move as quickly as possible to perform the victory ritual. Since nobody had considered doing this without defeating the opposing army first, the other team is confused enough for him to win. He is promptly told that starting in the next battle fought at Battle School, it would not be possible for an army to perform the victory ritual without first defeating or disabling everyone in the opposing army.▼
* The [[Discworld]]'s Assassin's Guild Diary has School Rule 16: "No boy is to keep a crocodile in his room." Followed by rules 16a to 16j to counter various forms of [[Loophole Abuse]], from the obvious ("16a. No boy is to keep an alligator or any large amphibious reptile in his room"; "16c. Nor in the cellar.") to the outlandish ("16h. No boy is to convert to Offlerism without permission in writing from the Head Master." [Offler is the Discworld's Crocodile God])
** According to ''[[
*** Which, when they added "Read boys for girls" as a note to the list, led to this:
{{quote|School Rule No.145 : No boy is to enter the room of any girl.
Line 218 ⟶ 229:
School Rule No.149 : Arguing over the wording of school rules is forbidden. }}
** This is surely a [[Historical In-Joke]] referring to Lord Byron. He wanted to keep a dog when he was at Cambridge, but school rules forbid it. He inspected the rules carefully and found there was nothing prohibiting [[Everything's Worse with Bears|pet bears]], so he got one. It's unknown when Cambridge applied the highly-necessary patch.
▲* In 2008 when the State of Nebraska tried to implement a [[wikipedia:Safe-haven law|Safe Haven Law]] it neglected to notice that its definition of "children" included anyone 18 or younger which resulted in 36 teenage children being driven in from out of state and abandoned at Nebraska hospitals. The law was patched to exclude older children later that year.
▲* In 2010, the polar bear was granted the status of Threatened under the Endangered Species Act...with a rider attached by Secretary of the Interior stating that the bear's new status couldn't be used to sue oil companies or greenhouse gas emitters (arguably, the two biggest threats to the species). The environmental activist organizations that had planned to do just that were not amused.
▲* In many places, there are obsolete, oddly specific, and/or downright weird laws that are still on the books, many of which are clearly patches created due to some [[Noodle Incident]] or another. One has to wonder what prompted lawmakers in San Francisco to prohibit [https://web.archive.org/web/20141202024029/http://www.dumblaws.com/laws/united-states/california?page=80 elephants from strolling down Market Street unless they're on a leash or wiping one's car with used underwear.]
▲* The [[wikipedia:World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction|World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction]] is an extremely prestigious award intended for short stories, but was originally only defined as "speculative fiction under 10,000 words". That is, until 1991, when the judges selected [[Neil Gaiman]] and Charles Vess' "A Midsummer's Night Dream" issue of [[The Sandman]], which (horror of horrors) ''[[What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?|is a comic book]]''. The World Fantasy Convention sniffily [[Executive Meddling|changed the rules]] almost immediately, relegating any future graphic novel submissions to the Special Award: Professional category. This means the [[The Sandman]] is the only comic book that ever has or ever will win this particular award.
▲** According to Gaiman, "It wasn't like closing the stable door after the horse had gotten out, it was like closing the stable door after the horse had gotten out and won the Kentucky Derby."
▲* In 2011, UK supermarket chain Tesco ran a promotion that if whatever they had happened to be cheaper at its competitor Asda, they will pay you double the difference (e.g., an item that costs 8 pounds but is only 5 at Asda would earn you 6 pounds). However, the difference in prices could be big enough that shoppers would get back more money than they spent. Naturally, many [[Genre Savvy|savvy]] shoppers exploited this by finding products they didn't even need but potentially gave them the biggest profit and using that to do their actual grocery shopping. Tesco had since put the difference cap to 20 pounds.
▲* In 2009 a large German electronics chain ran a promotion where you could buy any product without the Value Added Tax (currently 19%). It turned out, however, that a company can't just waive the VAT, they had to pay it nontheless. The products were just discounted by the amount of the VAT. Customers looked at their receipt and found that they indeed payed the tax, so they went back to the markets and got _another_ discount for the taxes. Needless to say they added a clause for that in their next promotion.
▲=== Literature ===
▲* In ''[[Ender's Game]]'', Ender's final battle as commander pits his Dragon Army against two armies combined. Ender discards all combat strategy and has his boys move as quickly as possible to perform the victory ritual. Since nobody had considered doing this without defeating the opposing army first, the other team is confused enough for him to win. He is promptly told that starting in the next battle fought at Battle School, it would not be possible for an army to perform the victory ritual without first defeating or disabling everyone in the opposing army.
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