There was no mention of this in the previous jams.
I understand that you want to warn first-time authors that this is a daunting and challenging jam, but I find it a little too patronizing. I consider that I have minimal experience playing text adventures games, having played a handful of games, mostly qbasic stuff, many years ago. I've played tons of p&c graphic adventure games, and read many CYOA books. So it's not like narrative intricacies and puzzles are foreign to me.
I understand what you're saying, it's just that it comes across as gatekeeping. And since I know you're not gatekeping the whole text adventure genre, then what's the point? It's weak, it shouldn't be there.