This post is dedicated to all those who mix up "play clues should be given ASAP" with "ASAP means play left".

A murder was committed. The police knows the following:

- the murderer was a male (A)
- he was 1.72m-1.82m tall (B)
- he had brown hair (C)
- he was right-handed (D)
- he had a high-pitched voice (E)
- he had green eyes (F)

It takes all criteria to declare someone a suspect. Every suspect must be A ∩ B ∩ C ∩ D ∩ E ∩ F.

Being a male – even being a green-eyed, right-handed male (A ∩ D ∩ F) –, is not enough to be a suspect. However, being non-male (Ā) is enough to be declared innocent.

In short: it takes just one "false" to rule out someone, but it takes all "true" to suspect them.

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Likewise with play clues. "ASAP" is one of several criteria that makes a multi-card clue (marks several previously unmarked cards) a "play left" clue.
If one or more of these criteria are absent, it’s not a "play left" clue.

Say I receive a multi-card ‘X’ clue and all the following claims are true:

- ASAP: the clue is given as soon as possible (A)
- off-chop: the clue is not on chop (this may sometimes be irrelevant) (B)
- tokens: the team didn’t clue ‘X’ earlier despite having enough tokens and not needing to spare them (C)
- emergencies: the team didn’t clue ‘X’ earlier despite having nothing more important to do (D)
- purity: the team didn’t clue ‘X’ earlier despite the clue being pure (no ‘X’ cards in my hand hindering the clue) (E)
- readiness: all this time, the ‘X’ card of value n−1 was in play or about to be played, or clued on someone else (F)

then I can conclude my ‘X’ cards were deliberately ignored earlier, because they were not the playable one, and the clue therefore aims at the only ‘X’ card I didn’t have earlier.

Now suppose any one of the above claims is false: I can’t exonerate all of my non-leftmost cards. Therefore, one of them could be the playable one, so I won’t play leftmost.

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Claiming "I played left because it was ASAP" is like saying "We sent him to jail because he had green eyes".