Multiple Choice Magic Design Question of the Day 27

27) How many of the following phrases work in the rules?

Target creature with flying
Target creature with monstrosity
Target creature with hexproof
Cards with a Gruul watermark
Cards with power 4 or greater
Cards with scry
Lands with activated abilities
Snow permanents
Common cards
Cards from Khans of Tarkir
Cards with a Khans of Tarkir rarity symbol
Cards illustrated by Wayne Reynolds 
Cards put into a graveyard from the battlefield this turn
Creature cards exiled last turn

 a) 4
 b) 7
 c) 10
 d) 11
 e) 14

Click through to see the answer and my rationale.

Target creature with flying  √

Target creature with monstrosity — Monstrosity is an action keyword, so it acts like a verb and can only exist within an activated, triggered, or conditional-static ability. Though it is printed on a creature card, it is not an ability that a creature has in the sense that a creature can have flying.

Target creature with hexproof  √  This is a terrible phrase, because 99.99% of the time it won't find any targets, but it technically works within the rules and becomes relevant when Glaring Spotlight is in play.

Cards with a Gruul watermark — Black-bordered Magic can't reference watermarks because it can only reference characteristics that will never change regardless of printing. (I'd argue that you could choose to make a certain watermark fair game by guaranteeing that those cards are only ever printed with that watermark, but that's not the official stance.)

Cards with power 4 or greater √

Cards with scry — Scry, like Monstrosity, is an action keyword, so a card can't "have scry" it can only "do scry." This is why Magma Jet and company were errata'd to have a period to end the sentence telling you to scry.

Lands with activated abilities  √

Snow permanents  √

Common cards — For the same reason we can't care about watermarks, we can't care about rarity.

Cards from Khans of Tarkir — For the same reason we can't care about watermarks, we can't care about expansions. City in a Bottle and its two nasty friends have been errata'd to care about cards "originally printed in" their respective sets, so that they effect reprints of cards that debuted in their sets, but not cards theirs sets reprinted like, importantly, the basic lands. That technically works because it has to. Don't do that.

Cards with a Khans of Tarkir rarity symbol — This is just another way of wording the last two items. Rarity and expansion can change across reprints and so aren't kosher.

Cards illustrated by Wayne Reynolds — For the same reason we can't care about watermarks, we can't care about the illustration or who made it.

Cards sent to the graveyard from the battlefield this turn  √  While we might not be able to track
which card in the graveyard was which card on the battlefield, we know which of the cards that are in the graveyard now arrive this turn and where they came from.

Creature cards exiled last turn  √  The memory issue is a concern, but this works in the rules for the same reason the last item did.

The only acceptable answer here is B, 7. If there had been a 6 or an 8, they would have been fair answers, but a three point spread should be enough to get you where you need to be. I'll give those of you went for 10 a nod, as there were multiple tricks in there.

This question tests intimate knowledge of a few very narrow sections of the rules. If you were only wrong about monstrosity, your rules knowledge (in this area) is entirely sufficient. Hexproof was tricky too—you shouldn't feel bad if that one tripped you up. Same for "Cards from Khans of Tarkir" (but not Cards with a Khans of Tarkir rarity symbol).

Things I could've asked and didn't: 
Creatures with variable power or toughness
Permanents copying other permanents
Non-creatures with power and toughness 
The power this creature card had when it was on the battlefield
Mark's cards