Heh heh. Well then. Vitalik, you yourself asked to play in advance, so please sort out point 1.
Regarding point 2, this game seems to have been counted. I can hardly imagine how one could give a normal description of a pure pass-through to prohibit it in the rules. I've even seen a discussion somewhere where a person, while running through the forest, passed through a passage to a neighboring respawn, also forest, and there was a small uproar, and the ruling was made in his favor. In my game, the ruling was also made in my favor. I can post a screenshot of one of the games (as part of another tournament)...where there is an unprotected passage to a respawn, and the nearest protected one is very, very far away.