9.14. How many times?

| Chapter 9: Time |

| 9.14. How many times?

There are two further ways to examine the historical record. Given any condition, we can say

> if (...condition...) for the second time ...
> if (...condition...) twice ...
> if (...condition...) 2 times...
> if (...condition...) two times...

(all of which are synonymous: the words once, twice, thrice, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth all mean what they obviously should). The result is true if the condition holds now and has held for only one previous spell in the past. A condition holding for, say, fifteen consecutive turns without a break counts as only one "time" - so what we mean by "twice" here is that it is true now, was previously false for a while, and was previously true for a while before that, but no more. In effect, then,

> if the player is in the Ballroom for the third time ...

is true if this is the third visit to the Ballroom. We can also say

> if the player is in the Ballroom for more than the third time ...

or similarly "less than", "at least", "at most". It would be more natural, though, to say

> if the player has been in the Ballroom three times ...

The adjective "only" (or equivalently "exactly") can be added to obtain

> if the player has been in the Ballroom only three times ...

To recap, this means there have been exactly three visits to the Ballroom in history, whereas

> if the player is in the Ballroom for the third time ...

means there have been exactly three visits, the third of which is still going on - an important distinction.

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| Example Infiltration A room whose description changes depending on the number of times the player has visited. |
RB

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