So I want to purposefully leave a loophole, without it being obvious… would love some feedback.
I’m toying with a homebrew world that loosely takes elements from a bunch of different books. 
The idea is… Players start at the beginning of a maze, by themselves, at different starting points. They all start by themselves, and they have a limited number of items on their person that they would have had from their starting equipment, plus an amulet that they must not lose, because the only way to win is to get to the end with the amulet.

Part of the “Games“ is there is a table before the entrance with several random (unknowingly magical) items. They have a limited amount of time to examine said items and choose which they would think would best aid them in reaching the end of the maze. Thus far I plan to instruct them as follows:

“Nine items you were permitted to bring, but 10 items you may enter with. Next to the entrance sits a table, upon which several useful items lie. You have 5 minutes to examine these items and make a choice. Caution to those who think to cheat: should you try to enter the maze with more items than what you were permitted, you will be automatically disqualified.”

I want to IMPLY, that they may only choose one item from the table, but in reality if they want to take more than one item from the table, they just have to give up something on their person. But I don’t want it to be obvious. The entire basis of the maze and getting through it is to encourage creativity and cleverness. And the table of items is an opportunity/test in and of itself. Thoughts on how I’ve worded it or how I could improve it? I don’t know if the loophole is just obvious to me because I wrote it… OR maybe it’s not obvious at all. Thoughts?

First I'm trying to find the loophole, but what if I throw away enough to grab all the items AND the table? the table could be magical, also what are the maze walls made of?

Quote from DemiBelle >>

So I want to purposefully leave a loophole, without it being obvious… would love some feedback.
I’m toying with a homebrew world that loosely takes elements from a bunch of different books. 
The idea is… Players start at the beginning of a maze, by themselves, at different starting points. They all start by themselves, and they have a limited number of items on their person that they would have had from their starting equipment, plus an amulet that they must not lose, because the only way to win is to get to the end with the amulet.

Part of the “Games“ is there is a table before the entrance with several random (unknowingly magical) items. They have a limited amount of time to examine said items and choose which they would think would best aid them in reaching the end of the maze. Thus far I plan to instruct them as follows:

“Nine items you were permitted to bring, but 10 items you may enter with. Next to the entrance sits a table, upon which several useful items lie. You have 5 minutes to examine these items and make a choice. Caution to those who think to cheat: should you try to enter the maze with more items than what you were permitted, you will be automatically disqualified.”

I want to IMPLY, that they may only choose one item from the table, but in reality if they want to take more than one item from the table, they just have to give up something on their person. But I don’t want it to be obvious. The entire basis of the maze and getting through it is to encourage creativity and cleverness. And the table of items is an opportunity/test in and of itself. Thoughts on how I’ve worded it or how I could improve it? I don’t know if the loophole is just obvious to me because I wrote it… OR maybe it’s not obvious at all. Thoughts?

 That isn't a loophole. The implication that you can only take one item is so mild that it probably wouldn't even occur to them - it didn't occur to me while reading it.

You want to make the implication stronger. Something that says something more like that you can take one more item than you already have, you may choose from the table. I know the gist is the same, but it leads them to thinking in terms of only gaining one more item, as opposed to thinking in terms of total number of items that they have with them.

The loophole is that you CAN take more than one item as long as you forfeit something you have and don’t exceed the limit. My goal is to not outright tell the players this… I want them to actually pay attention to the instructions and figure it out themselves  

But, in theory you actually COULD take everything from the table (yes, plus the table, lol), as long as they leave some of their starting stuff behind. But these items aren’t going to be obviously magical. They will actually seem quite normal unless they interact or examine them. 

Also they have a time limit to examine and choose. So unless someone is going to blindly say I leave all of my stuff and collect the items provided, they shouldn’t end up with all of them. 

The maze walls (at least from the beginning) appear to be 7ft stone walls (2ft thick). So literally one creative thought I honestly had was someone could climb up and just walk on top. I purposefully made them not very high.  But in certain areas the walls will become different materials (still haven’t worked out all the kinks). But overall the “rules” of the maze game are quite literally made to be broken.

My point is that the suggestion is so weak that the "loophole" is the obvious interpretation. You've not really suggested that they can only take one item, so they would be taking the mechanics as presented and as far as they're concerned, as intended if they took more than one item.

Let's take the three wishes rule. It would be a loophole to try and take four wishes by claiming that "you have three wishes" means that you could have four wishes as it is not excluded by the previous statement. If the statement was "you can have at least 3 wishes", then trying for your isn't really a loophole, it's part of the rules as presented and seemingly as intended.

Your statement is analogous to the latter statement. It doesn’t really direct people's thoughts to the mindset that they can only take one more item. It's a fairly straight account of the rules. If you want to test their ability to seek and find loopholes, you need to be a lot more suggestive. Hence my suggestion of using the phrase "you can take one more item than you have", because it has an element that directs them to the taking only one item, while not actually ruling out the idea that they can trade items and still be within the rules.

Ah, I see. Sorry I saw another comment/reply and not your initial suggestion. Think I hit reply to you though.  That is a great rephrasing suggestion, thank you! 

I did feel like it was to obvious but was struggling with how to phrase without placing the limitation of one item from the tables. 

The issue I see is the players are not the PC's and the PC's are not the players, so what would the PC do and can your players act that out? So as a GM you have to plan for some boundaries for the players as well as hints for other players based on their PC's characteristics and not them. 

I got the feeling that all the players were in the room at the same time but you might want to have each player encounter the room alone and make decisions alone (can be done over email vs in person to speed up play time).

Also each PC may need a different item or items to complete the maze or a number of items used by different PC's are needed to complete the final room.  

You have arrived with nine items. Before you lies a selection of which you may have your pick. When you have chosen your tenth item, step forth.

What do we want the impact of this to be? If it is just to give off a certain vibe and allow players to feel smart when they exploit the loophole, honestly it doesn't need to be super subtle.

It can be really hard to hit the perfect spot where the players don't immediately figure it out but also don't completely miss it. Generally I have found it's better to err on the side of obviousness. So I think it's fine as is.

Just be ready for players to attempt to create their own loopholes. Like taking everything and running over the top of the maze without ever "entering" it. Or rigging items together to be "my new staff" to count as one item. Or to just decide a table full of stuff is a better prize than whatever winning the maze would be. Even if you try really hard to pass it off as junk, there are character out there that love junk or compulsively collect things.

Can you take the table with all of the items on top of it? To me this seems like how it might be solved in an old Greek Legend.