Dear Sean,

I was just wondering whether you could adjust the rules to remove references to gender. In some places you use he or she, him or her but in others its just her. What I suggest is that you either use "their" or simply say "the player" instead. This applies equally to the main rules and you monster custom rules list. What do you think? My main sport, roller derby, prides itself on gender neutrality when it comes to rules. I intend to use the four squares game as a drill on roller skates - should be fun!

- John Davis

Thanks for the message, John. I have two important points.

  1. Regarding the gender references. Official rules? Check, done. The monster rules? We didn't write those. That was skimmed off Wikipedia's user contributions when they were threatened to be deleted because they lacked proper citation (and rightly so since most of them were made up rules from kids around the country). We just did a little automated find/replace operations in a word processor to swap out his and hers for one's and so on. I did not proofread, but I bet that did the trick.
  2. Regarding the roller skates drills. I'll be super disappointed if you don't send some photos of your four square roller skate activity. That is a dimension I have never imagined, and it's definitely worth a spot on our blog.

Best of luck,

Sean