u/ChordettesFan325

As a recently retired Legend 30, I thought I'd share some of the strategy advice I've learned in my time playing this game:

1. Read the Hall of Heroes! Yes, it's long, but a lot of rules are similar to previous ones. If you know the old rules, you can spot similar ones more easily.
2. Sort the subreddit by NEW. Then you know all the posts being made in the current rule, and their order, which is often important.
3. Make sure you know what the post flairs mean! Some new players seem to think that ANY flair means a post breaks the rule. A post only breaks the rule if the flair contains "broke the rule". "Announcement" and similar things don't count.
4. On a similar note, any posts after the most recent post to have any flair (besides "Rule Guess" or "Epilepsy Warning") have not been checked. Don't think the lack of flairs here means all the posts follow the rule. Sometimes there will be a break of several hours with no modding without warning.
5. If you are trying to guess the rule, write "RG:" at the start of your post (followed by the guess), and/or use the "Rule Guess" flair. I always did both, however you don't need to do both.
6. Don't make your RGs too vague! Make it something that you would know how to moderate yourself. Something like "RG: some numbers break the rule" (I do see newbies guessing things like this sometimes) will never be marked correct, even if the actual rule is about certain numbers breaking the rule.
7. Check if the rule is consistent. By consistent, I mean that the exact same post will always get the same judgement, regardless of other factors such as the user posting, previous posts, etc. An easy way to do this is to send someone else's post that both broke and followed the rule (multiple times to be sure).
8. If the rule is consistent, a common and effective strategy is to parse messages. That is, send smaller and smaller chunks of a message (even splitting up words) until you find exactly what breaks the rule. Remember that if you narrow it down to 5 letters breaking the rule, and the 4-letter substrings don't, it could still be a result of just the 1st and 5th letters in combination!
9. Check if only full words are breaking (or following) the rule, or if nonsensical fragments do too. If it's only full words, the rule is related to the words (eg. meaning, pronunciation). If non-words are included too, the rule is about the characters rather than the words they make up.
10. If the rule is consistent, check if it's along the lines of "must contain X" or "must NOT contain X", the latter being more common. If you post something that breaks the rule and something that doesn't in the same post, the outcome will usually tell you which of these two types of rule it is.
11. If the rule is not consistent, check if it is consistent by user! That is, the same post will get the same judgement regardless of other factors IF it is made by the same user. Again, you can check this by sending duplicate posts, and looking at other users' duplicate posts.
12. You may find that ALL of certain users' posts break the rule, and ALL of other users' posts never break the rule. This suggests that the rule considers the user only, and not the content of the post itself. When this happens, look extensively at users' profiles (eg. username, cakeday, trophy case) to see if you can see how they are split into 2 groups. For example, Rule 331: User's cakeday must be an even number.
13. ​If the rule is not consistent even by user, there are still a few categories it could fall into. A common one is considering the previous post. For example, Rule 379: Post title must have at least as many dots as the previous post's title. You can check for this by making the same 2 posts in a row multiple times, and seeing if the second post always gets the same judgement.
14. Another category of inconsistent rule is rotating letters. For example, if "DOG" was to break the rule in rotating order, this means the first post with D breaks the rule, the next post with O breaks the rule, the next post with G breaks the rule, then it loops back to D. If a post containing all 26 letters consistently breaks the rule, that's a hint it could be rotating letters. You can try to work out the phrase by making a logical string of letters that could be in the phrase that are contained in consecutive messages that break the rule. I've discovered most of us have a bit of a blind spot for rotating letters, so if you spot this fast, you will probably win.
15. The rule could also be about the time the post is made. If this is the case, it's probably the minute number only, as due to time zones the hour is different for everyone playing. Time-based rules are quite rare, however.
16. Always check if the rule pertains to the post title only, or if it also pertains to the body of the post. An easy way to check this is by making a post with a title that you know won't break the rule, and a body that you know will (if it was the title). If this post doesn't break the rule, it's title-only. It is easy to forget "in the post title" when making a RG, but you WILL NOT be marked correct if you don't include this in a title-only rule!
17. Some rules relate to the rule number, e.g. "Rule 396: No 3, 9, or 6-letter words in the post title". See if you can relate a pattern you find to the rule number! Additionally, if it's a multiple of 50, it's probably a "special" rule in some way.
18. If you think you're on track to solving the rule, don't make it obvious to others what you're doing! For example, in the "no weekday abbreviations" rule, I noticed a post containing "mon" broke the rule, so I suspected that might have been the pattern. I then made posts saying "it seems wed been misled" and "a cat sat on a mat", which hide weekday abbreviations, to confirm this theory. If I had just posted "wed" and "sat", it would be obvious to others what the idea is, and someone could snipe me on the RG. I also didn't just make the RG right away, as if it's "almost correct", this gives other players a massive hint. If you don't care too much about winning, ignore this last point.
19. If you DON'T think you have a decent idea of the rule that you want to keep secret, share your thoughts with others by making posts of your observations! (eg. "Observation: all 2-digit numbers break the rule.) The collaborative effort can lead to someone else getting a better idea, and overall better progress towards solving the rule.
20. Most importantly, have fun! And don't let the game consume your life like it did for me!

Because Rule 396

Rule 396 is active!