Hey judges!

This came up to me while judging yesterdays WMCQ (so competitive REL) and I still don't know what the correct call is so I'm coming here for your help.

Player N has Wurmcoil Engine on the battlefield and Player A cast Terminate on it. Player N puts it into the graveyard and after about 5 seconds of Player N's thinking what to do next, a spectator says “Oh and you also get 2 tokens”. Note here that no player took any action afterwards, so trigger has technically not been missed by our current guidelines.

OA for me here is pretty clear, but what do we do with trigger? Do we give Player N time to remember it (of course he will now), do we apply Missed trigger fix (so ask opponent if he wants the trigger or not) or do we simply say the trigger is missed (which is basically the same as 2nd option).

When I investigated the situation I found out that Player N simply forgot about the trigger and he admited that he would not remember if the spectator wouldn't mention it. Can this testimony influence our decision?

Thanks for your help.

We've talked about this a bit, but I've thought about it and here is the basis of my decision: we need to determine whether a trigger is missed, not forgotten. A trigger would have been missed when A had taken an action that they could not have taken while the trigger was still on the stack. This hasn't happened and while A may have forgotten the trigger, they still had time to remember it before being interrupted by the spectator.

This tells me that we should not deviate and call the trigger missed. It might feel unfair at first, but it is entirely in the realm of possibility that A would have remembered it, so I would rule the trigger not missed.

As we know,there is no proper fixing for OA.
How i will fix it?.
I will return to the point where the OA happened.
Since he was doing nothing,and It has not happened any action in the game, i believe he is still in the chance to remember his trigger (although now he is going to remember for sure)
–Why?
If the OA was about giving the correct play, would you force him, to make the incorrect one?
we cant/could not avoid the OA, but we should not force him or take a decision for him (my opinion).

Edited Emmanuel Leal (Sept. 6, 2015 06:49:15 PM)

I like Mitja's explanation and Emmanuel's analogy a lot.
What also weighs in here is that I really do not want to punish a player for beign honest to a judge; had the player lied, it would be a DQ or a granted trigger, but being honest makes him lose the trigger. I want to make this decision without having to estimate the truthfullnes of the player's response, and rely on facts rather than questions.