The past ten years have seen an upsurge of interest in Plato's Parmenides among those who study philosophy, and all agree that it is Plato's most riddling dialogue. Chief among the reasons for this enigmatic quality is the exercise which Parmenides calls the "laborious game". And the sorry truth of the matter is that most of the commentaries on the dialogue, some ancient but more modern, are incredibly wearying to read, more than the dialogue itself. As if aware of this, (...) commentators themselves use words like "tedious," "disagreeable," "singularly unappealing" to characterise the game, and simultaneously to apologize for what is to come: much more of the same in their interpretations. But lest there be any misunderstanding, the charge against most modern commentators is not that they make the student of the dialogue work, but simply that they have failed to keep together the two aspects of Parmenides' "game that looks like work", that is to say, the playful and the serious. They have made the game too much like work. (shrink)