1. Each player gets 16,777,216 things. 2¹⁰ = 1024 x 1024 = 1K. K things are often called one bunchathings. So each player get 16 bunchathings. (In some circles, one bunchathings is called a kilomillething).


2. Things are kept in crates that hold 4096 things each.


3. Crates are stored in either the workshop or a storeroom. The workshop is usually too small to hold all the crates. Each player's crates in the workshop at the same time are called crate-mates.


4. There is one workshop, but there may be several storerooms. Everyone shares them. All storerooms comprise one large warehouse.


5. When in the workshop, each crate sits on a workbench. When in the warehouse, each crate sits on a shelf.


6. What you do with a thing is you zark it. Everybody takes turns zarking. You can only zark your things, not anybody else's.


7. Things can only be zarked when they're in the workshop.


8. Each thing has its own thing number.


9. Only the Thing King knows whether a thing is in the workshop or in the warehouse


10. The longer a thing goes without being zarked, the grubbier it becomes.


11. The way you get things is to ask the thing king. He only gives out things in multiples of 16 crates which he calls a truckload. This is to keep the royal overhead down.


12. The way you zark a thing is to give its thing number. If you give the number of a thing that happens to be in the workshop, it gets zarked right away. The thing finder figures out which workbench has the thing you want zarked.


13. If the thing you want to zark isn't in the workshop, the thing finder yells "bleep". This tells the Thing King to fetch the crate containing your thing from the warehouse. If there is no empty workbench, he first finds the grubbiest crate in the workshop, whether it be yours or somebody else's, and it carries it off to the warehouse. This is called shelving the thing. In its place, he puts the crate containing your things. Your thing gets zarked and you never knew it wasn't in the workshop all along.


14. Each player's stock of things (his/her hoard) has the same thing numbers as everyone else's. The Thing King always knows what thing and whose turn it is, so you can't ever accidentally zark somebody else's thing even if it has the same thing number as yours.


15. The Thing King has a few things of his own, some of which get moved back and forth between workshop and warehouse like anybody else's. Some of these, though, are too heavy to move out of the workshop, so he keeps them on workbenches in the basement.


16. Sometimes the Thing King spends so much time fetching and shelving crates he doesn't do his regular jobs. This is called goofing off.


17. The Thing King won't fetch a crate until you zark a thing. This is called slothfulness.


18. The Thing King may bolt a crate to a workbench. This keeps the crate in the workshop, but reduces the number of benches available to everyone else.


19. The Thing King may bolt a crate to a workbench. This keeps the crate in the workshop, but reduces the number of benches available to everyone else.

1. The Thing King knows what crate in the workshop is the grubbiest by looking at the ticky marks on his workshop inventory sheet.


2. He finds crates in the warehouse using his warehouse inventory sheet.


3. Most players quickly discover a good way to avoid waiting for the Thing King is to zark things in the same crate before moving to another. This has become known as the strategy "Love Thy Cratemate."


4. Traditionally the Thing King sits at a large, segmented table and is attended to by pages (the so-called "Table Pages") whose job it is to help the King remember where everything is and to who they belong to.


5. One consequence of Rule 14 is everybody's thing numbers will be similar from game to game, regardless of the number of players.


6. With the given set of rules, oft-zarked things tend to remain in the workshop while rarely zarked things tend to remain in the warehouse. This is efficient stock control.

Long Live The Thing King!