A good IF is not about guessing the game element as you would with the painted background of an adventure game. To say that would be like comparing physics puzzles to a Where's Waldo? book because there is only one ultimate solution or set of solutions. Even problems encountered in life are like that. IF at its best presents problems similar those you'd find in life or, say, Half-Life 2 or Penumbra. Your attempt at solving the problem sometimes makes a mess, but restoring to a save because of the mess isn't an option because what if the mess you made is part of the solution?
The purpose of giving the player a paragraph rather than a list isn't to make them guess keywords, but to flood them with enough game elements that a trial and error approach eventually results in total failure. In any given room you have several objects to manipulate, and each of these may or may not respond to one another or to something in your inventory. The puzzle's task is to provide clues to proper the proper combination of these elements, so that it is solved by thinking the problem through rather than throwing ideas at the wall to see if they stick.
Ideally you aren't simply guessing combinations, because wrong combinations can both close off avenues to the solution and enable new ones in other rooms. The problem becomes: Now that you've further broken some device, does it occur to you that a piece of it might be used in another room you've explored? Or did you attempt to manipulate the object before fully exploring the area around it?
And then you have the side effects of your actions. An item in your possession has changed, a room has filled up with water, a sidekick has fled into the tunnels. Maybe this time you can afford to examine the item, dive into the water, and follow the sidekick - but the air is filling up with smoke, and exploring all possibilities every time will result in your death.
Surely there are good text adventures that allow unlimited testing of the vocabulary, but they are good in spite of that, because of the writing or the overall fun of the experience. I disagree that these games' good reputation means there's something inadequate about the form. It just means the form hasn't often been fully realized.
While we're on the subject, how the hell should I go about playing Infocom games these days? I find that WinFrotz constantly omits lines, and playing them in DosBox is torture to set up. If there's a good alternative to Frotz or someone would provide me with advice on properly setting it up I would appreciate that.
