Sometimes we do not particularly want to deal with all the variations on asking, telling, or answering someone something, but want to direct everything to a single conversational command:
will match either "Darius" or "king". If necessary, we can go a step further and define our own token to match a variety of phrases, like this:
{**}Understand "Athenians/Spartans/Greeks" or "hoplite army/forces" as "[Greeks]". Instead of asking the Sybil about "[Greeks]", say "She looks encouraging."
The token "[Greeks]" will match all of "Athenians", "Spartans", "Greeks", "hoplite army", or "hoplite forces". It will not match "hoplite" or "forces" alone; it is important to note that the / divides individual words which are understood equivalently, but does not define entire phrases as equivalent. More about how Inform understands specific phrases can be found in the chapter on Understanding.
Test two with "ask sybil about greeks / ask sybil about athenians / ask sybil about hoplite army / ask sybil about hoplite forces / give the coin to the sybil".