“And now you presume to speak to one of the hrrugh without a proper introduction? Insolent blorg!” (Great. Apparently your translator module is faulty.) “I cannot hold a grrbog under such conditions. Produce your rrha or cease wasting my time.”
Naomi Hinchen’s Tea Ceremony involves some awkward and under-prepared diplomacy with an alien.
It’s reasonably short, funny, and sweet. I was able to solve all the puzzles without even contemplating hints or a walkthrough. I encountered zero parsing issues or coding errors.
Having said that —
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How many times must a puzzle repeat? When I saw the 4-unit measuring cup and the 7-unit measuring cup I let out a small sigh of desperation. I realize, perhaps, this is the first time some people will have done a measuring puzzle, and maybe the other games it occurred in are old. I might make a joke about how the collective memory of the community is failing so much we’ll soon have mazes again, except at least 3 games in this competition had mazes.
So, let’s smash the rules and start anew. A public service announcement:
Rule #1 of Interactive Fiction: Don’t do mazes.
Rule #2 of Interactive Fiction: Don’t do liquid measurements puzzles.
Rule #3 of Interactive Fiction: Only violate rules #1 and #2 if — you know what? Just don’t.
Renga in Blue 
There’s also one in Katana, IIRC. ( http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=cpjghpdd3q80at2r )
We could also add rules for 15-puzzles and jumping pegs (of which Zarf memorably wrote “Have we not said it enough? Have we not wept and rent our garments by the riverside?”). I know, we’re talking non-graphical IF here, but the fifteen puzzle was done once ( http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=32nzgcw9qoi4k1i4 ), and that was enough.
The similar puzzle I’ve seen twice is the connect-every-dot-with-three-lines puzzle, which I’ve seen in two games — spoilerly — Grounded In Space and Space Suit (huh, commonality). Though at least they somewhat disguised that that was what they were up to. (Unfortunately Grounded in Space had awkward enough interaction mechanisms that I wound up going to the walkthrough even after I knew what puzzle I was doing.)
I actually found the jumping pegs puzzle charming in Machinarium.