Last time, I brought you the harrowing tale of a robot that’s very good at curling. Its name is Curly, it’s a crumbum, and it’s a threat to our very sport.
However the World Curling Federation released its rules for the season. The main highlights include stricter definitions of the curling sheet dimensions, the addition of wheelchair mixed doubles, and a litany of tiebreaking procedure cleanup. (Those are always fun.) But that was not the most important addition — that would be Rule R5 (d), regarding delivery:
The curling stone must be delivered using the handle of the stone.
They say one person can’t make a difference. Not even me, someone here writing a curling newsletter, of all things, could imagine that change can happen with a simple opinion. What’s more, I didn’t even have a good solution to stop the robot — just that we should all band together and resist the robots from taking over our delivery duties. I was thinking of just installing very strong magnets around the rink. But the answer was so simple. I’m a little mad I didn’t think of it first, but the WCF took care of it for us.
The curling robot doesn’t deliver with the handle, so it can’t play. The world is safe, once again. For now.