Maybe the definition of playing has to involve flipping? I mean, it’s not the IPA for a reason. Right? 
But then we’d at a spot where we’d need to assess a player’s intention, and that’s not a fun place for the rules to take anyone.
I like the ruling as it was made, and I also like the policy of the ball leaving the shooter lane and entering the playfield as crossing the line into “playing out of turn”.
Would the same ruling be made on Xs & Os if it caused a player to miss out on their timed skill shot?
but what if he held the left flipper button in, and the too-short-to-leave-shooter-lane plunge wasted P4’s chance to do a Super Skill shot? 
(MET’s super skill shot times out even if you plunge too short to get out of the shooter lane. You can even still have an unvalidated playfield and drain your ball, but your super skill shot opportunity is gone)
Ah… an even better example than the MET super skill shot one. I would rule this as interference, because the next player is definitely impacted.
I won my IFPA group game on X’s and O’s on plunging alone. 
Great question. Didn’t apply here, but really interesting to think about.
Pretty sure it would have timed out the regular skill shot as well, so would have impacted P4 no matter what he was planning to do.
Another can of worms: Do the TDs out there allow super skill shot attempts on plunged EBs? Obviously, no flipping to hit the ball, but holding down the left flipper on MET and attempting to get the top lanes or maybe the fun double flipper carom into the Mystery Super Skill shot.
And did you know that, at least according to the DMD, the top lane version is really “just” a regular “Skill Shot x 2” (left lane) or “Skill Shot x 4” right lane)?
I don’t like the ruling (but would have made the same call). I won’t even double flip to cancel extra ball buy-in on another player’s ball for fear of interference. I certainly would have told the player that they are getting a warning and to be more careful in the future.
I want the rule to be don’t touch the machine if it is not your turn. However, for many machines, you need to press the flipper to see whose turn it is. I have seen people give their appoinents a “thank you mister Data” without even knowing it when they walked up to the machine during bonus count.
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What if someone accidentally does something like open the gate for super skillshot on corvette? You can certainly change game state without plunging.
At least this one in particular can be undone by a skillful TD.
All of the examples being thrown out above are describing ACTUAL INTERFERENCE, and IMO are different from examples of there not being ANY interference.
If I lose my super skill shot opportunity on Metallica, there’s nothing to discuss. I’ve been interfered with, and the verbiage regarding unintentional interference takes precedent over determining how material the interference actually was.
What about having a tilt warning get through to the next player?
Interference
Allowed (with player warning)
What about having a majestic spinner rip on Meteor and draining so fast that the next player is awarded some low-point spins? (And therefore loses his opportunity for a zero-switch ball save.)
Interference
Allowed
We have specific verbiage for exactly that situation . . . follow the rules
There is a line clearly crossed in the other examples about a player actually doing ‘something’ to the game AFTER the ball is served into the plunger lane for the next player. This is not one of those cases.
Similar to the tilt warning verbiage, if someone wanted to really push me that they were interfered with I’d probably let them get away with similar compensation:
“The player with the warning will be allowed to continue play as normal, or choose to have the ball played on a fresh game.”
In this case, the player is welcome to play ball 1 on a fresh game (with no game state progress) if they feel that not having their zero-switch ball save is a big deal. Otherwise play on.
Now that’s what I call skillfully draining!
Overall I’d agree that there’s no reason to DQ if the erroneous plunge has no impact on the player.
Though Xs & Os is like Frankenstein. If you’re not close enough to the player before you at the end of their ball to realize they’re about to plunge your ball and stop them, you’re messin’ up.
Well, the effect is certainly taking place after the ball is served, even if the cause took place before it.
If you really think the rules should work the way you say they do, can you explain why a tilt-through is a DQ? Is it just an exception (and the only one) to this rule?
EDIT: I really wrote “If you really think the rules should work the way you say they do”? Damn. I’ll leave it in, but please replace it in your mind with something 90% less snarky when you read it.
I’m focused on the cause here, and whether the cause of the effect is happening BEFORE or AFTER the ball is served.
The original examples of this thread seemed to focus on the cause being AFTER the ball is served.
It’s now morphed into examples of the cause happening BEFORE the ball is served . . . and that’s down another path altogether. For this path we do clearly lay out situations explicitly - tilt throughs and tilt warning-throughs for example.
I can’t think of many other situations for the cause taking place before the next ball is served, and the effect impacting the next player up:
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Tilt Throughs - handled explicitly in the rules
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Tilt Warning Throughs - handled explicitly in the rules
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Valid Playfield/Certain Features enabled/disabled - this is a wrinkle where depending on the material impact of what that valid playfield/features represents, it’s well within the right of the TD to give the player a choice to play on, or take a fresh ball on a new game.
Besides the avoidance of tilt-throughs, the IFPA’s choice to play early solid state games as 2-player games makes even more sense for X & O’s. (typically played on players 1 and 3, but in the cases of X & O’s, players 2 & 4 works even better, so player 1 doesn’t lose any time on ball one while pushing the start button 4 times).
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Tilt-through free since IFPA9! 
Ughhhh it’s still painful to watch:
Even more painful to listen to Cayle’s self-commentary about it.
Weird . . . I had pasted in the link in my post, but it doesn’t look like it ended up displaying it . . . Greg?
Bzzzzzzzt. Incorrect. Jorgen tilted through to me on Genesis this year.
So add Genesis to the list of pins that need to be played on 1 & 3 only.
And thankfully, I had a killer compensation ball to take the 7 on that game.