Hmm. At first I thought you were running into a problem with my extension – the quips are not tangible rule duplicates that same error message – but no, that’s the behavior of the parser. I think this may be an Inform bug.
[spoiler][code]Command Tent is north of Revelation Woods.
A map is a thing in Command Tent. The description is “You can’t read the writing. Maybe Bob knows?”
Bob is a man in the Tent.
Understand “explain [something]” as examining when Bob is in the location.
Instead of asking Bob to try examining the map, say “Wow! A map!”
Alice is a woman in the woods.
explain everything is a thing in the woods. Understand “[something]” as examining.
Test me with “x map / talk to Bob / Bob, explain the map / south / talk to Alice / explain everything”.[/code][/spoiler]
produces
[spoiler]Welcome
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 140603 / Inform 7 build 6L02 (I6/v6.33 lib 6/12N) SD
Command Tent
You can see a map and Bob here.
>test me
(Testing.)
>[1] x map
You can’t read the writing. Maybe Bob knows?
>[2] talk to bob
That’s not a verb I recognise.
>[3] bob, explain the map
Wow! A map!
>[4] south
Revelation Woods
You can see Alice and explain everything here.
>[5] talk to alice
That’s not a verb I recognise.
>[6] explain everything
I didn’t understand that sentence.
>[/spoiler]
Ordinarily I would say busterwrites is correct, naming a thing anything that may potentially collide with a system term is dangerous, and that includes ‘everything’.
Ideally, TC should detect the “Bob, [quip]” syntax and convert it to a ‘discussing [quip]’ action so you don’t have to worry about this at all. But for some reason, TC’s ‘correct indirect instructions rule’ isn’t firing in the case of asking someone to try discussing.