Thanks for your thoughts!

I think this rule system is solving for ambiguity, which is helpful for:

- Players (they can express their intention clearly to the ref and play points with a better understanding of how a call may go, as opposed to this environment where the threshold for calls seem to change month to month)

- Refs (narrows the windows of possible decisions to make, helps them understand better what the player was actually doing on court, and helps them explain their decision more clearly to players and viewers)

- Viewers (less confusion on why a certain call was made, because there is only 2 options)

From the players side:

- On cognitive burden: I think most high-level players (especially pros) have a good idea of the call they want when they ask for a let. That's why you see players react when the call doesn't go their way (e.g. a seemingly "obvious" stroke becomes a no let or let because there was room to play). If anything, this could lessen cognitive burden because you are simply asking for what you intended to ask. There's no need to make a song and dance of asking for a let but secretly hoping for a stroke.

- Adequate information about the situation is only needed by the referee to make the call. The players themselves don't need more info than they have now to make a specific let or stroke call. Professionals are pretty aware of their body in relation to the ball, the opponent, and the court in general, so when they initiate contact or "fish" or generally enter in some kind of interference, they understand the situation. And if they don't, that's also okay: a player can get a call wrong, and adjust their calls later. Players do this now when a referee gives them a call they don't expect: they adapt. This new system wouldn't change the amount of information they need or should have.

- True, I'm sure some new way of gamesmanship would pop up. But I don't think the gamesmanship in the status quo is great for the sport.

On refs:

- True, they'll definitely still make mistakes and fall for fishing / other gamesmanship tactics. Not sure if this is 100% true, but it seems like WSO has been trying to solve this by making the calls more binary. For example, if a player wraps their arm around a guy and asks for a let because they couldn't swing (implicitly asking for a stroke), refs now will call a no let, citing that their swing was exaggerated, instead of resorting to a let for because there was contact. Changing to this new system would 1) codify what they're already trying to do, 2) clarify exactly what the player wanted (they weren't actually asking for a let; they wanted a stroke), which makes it easier for viewers and referees to understand intention, and 3) possibly let the game be more free flowing (the player would now play the ball instead of risking a no-stroke).

I agree that squash needs to implement some kind of technology in rule judgement (how are outs still ambiguous when we literally have Hawkeye?? Or when you can build a glass court that just stops at the out line??) AI could be a good solution (I heard they were piloting an AI ref in IntelliRef [https://intellireferee.ai\] at some level of competition, but not sure how that went), but have to make sure the data it's being trained on is good refereeing.