Yes, I agree with that, because the “pictures” are emerging in your head. It’s like reading a book versus watching a movie.
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and also, they can represent events that would be too expensive with graphics. And this can result in more immersion. in theory.
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Thought of the day: 
Maybe there’s nothing wrong with “guess the parser”. maybe what we consider problems in the text parser are actually flaws in the puzzle. Let me explain: what exactly is the problem with “guess the parser?” The alleged problem is that you end up in a situation where you are not sure if you have solved the puzzle and you are just wording it wrong, or you haven’t solved the puzzle. But this means it’s a bad puzzle in the first place. Because good puzzles (arguably) have the property that, when you solve them, you are sure you have solved them, even before you try. So, if the puzzle is good, it’s impossible that you are unsure whether you solved it or not. You are sure you are wording it incorrectly.
example: you are playing cards with someone. you keep losing. on the wall behind him there is a hook. on the other wall there is a mirror. You solve the puzzle: you need to hang the mirror on the hook behind him, so when you play you will see his cards reflected.
now, once you understand this, you are sure you solved the puzzle. it can’t be a coincidence that there’s a mirror and a hook in the room. So that is a good puzzle.
now, you type “stick mirror on hook” and the parser does not understand. Is this frustrating? No. You already know you solved it. You are confident. You type “hang mirror on hook”. Again, the parser does not understand. Is this frustrating? No. It’s impossible that the solution is different. Those objects can’t be there for another reason than that. Eventually, you write “put mirror on hook”, and it works.
actually it’s a puzzle from a text adventure I played 25 years ago. (made before monkey island)
It was something with Gods, deities… The name could have been Myth but I am not sure
actually it was a shield you had to hang. A shiny shield. When I solved that puzzle, I decided these games were the best.
Oh I´m sure that lots of variations of that trick exist all throughout history. Finding ways to cheat at competetive games is a staple of adventure games.
I do not think I would call that the only alleged problem, although that is part of it. The biggest problem in my mind is that what makes sense to the designer may not may sense to the player. Most of the time, it’s not a matter of broken vocabulary, but of bizarre moon logic.
I do agree with you that the problem is not the vocabulary nor the logic, but a flaw in the puzzle design manifested in one of those.
However, that is like saying “the problem is not that the game is bad, but that it was designed badly.” The end result is a bad puzzle or a bad game, so it’s a trivial difference.
dZ.
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Maybe we are more dumb? 
Since the late 80s the PnC adventures replaced the text adventures. So maybe we forgot to think in complex sentences. With Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, etc. we learned to simply “use key with door”. Especially with the one-click interfaces we are trained to “use” everything. (Note that this is a theory )
Really? The parser should be clever enough to figure out what the player wants to do. For example if you write “use the key with the door” the parser should be clever enough to recognize that you want to unlock the door. Or the parser should ask you back “do you want to unlock the door or do you want to throw the key to the door?”. With a good parser it isn’t needed to “guess the verb” - an exception would be a puzzle, for example where you have to cast a spell with a specific word.
(btw: Most text adventure games came with a printed list of verbs they understood.)
I have no proof but I suspect that, even if the parser passed the Turing test and understood everything perfectly :), text adventures would not be significantly more popular. Cause I suspect the real pain is typing, not guessing the parser. To test my hypothesis, we could see what happens with voice-operated text adventures, which have a dumb parser
this gives me an idea: tonight I’ll try to play “lost pig” on my phone with voice commands
I think the real pain (such as it is) is the reading. The same reason why movies and television shows make a lot more money than books.
That doesn’t mean that reading is bad or that people don’t like to read. However, it means that there is a natural preference, at least in the mainstream, for more visual forms of entertainment.
dZ.
Voice commands have significantly improved. On my android phone I don´t text by hand anymore, I speak my messages.
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let me sum up what I believe (totally without proof) :
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the problem with text adventures is not that you need to read a lot, because many people read books after all.
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the problem is not that you need to guess the parser, because if you are sure what the puzzle solution is, it’s not that frustrating to try a few wordings. (see example above)
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the problem is not that you need to think how to solve puzzles, because thinking comes naturally and is not tiresome;
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the problem is that, in order to play, you need to type. This is what makes the text adventure inaccessible in precisely the situations I would like to use it (in bed trying to get sleep, when I am stuck in a queue, on the beach, etc), situations where a book (which is the real competitor of a text adventure) is totally usable.
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Yes, but you still have to speak them. That’s similar to type them. Ok, it’s faster, but after work at least I don’t have the wish to talk to a text adventure.
Edit:
You can let it read by the computer. So you have a “hear and speak” adventure.
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I think you have described the problem with text adventures from your perspective, but I think there are many different kinds of people. Those that like to read, those that don’t, those that like to write (and type), those that don’t. I’m of the camp that really enjoys both reading and writing. I could probably accept voice commands as an alternative to typing fairly easily though, and I agree that would make the text adventures (or interactive fiction), more accessible to a wider audience.
I feel differently than you with your “guess the parser” conclusion also. My problem with the “guess the parser” issue is precisely what you describe. I’m convinced I know the solution now, I just need to fight with a primitive parser to get my point across. That’s what frustrates me.
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I second that!
If you are sure you have the correct solution, but you cannot convince the parser to accept your command that is very frustrating for me.
Especially if you play games in a language you are not fluent. E.g. Playing a text adventure by an American author while you are used to British english… 
But more often just trying to play an english adventure when your native language is not english.
For me it was a bit different. The “guess what the parser wants” meta-game actually helped me to learn English!
Sometimes the word that I used wasn’t understood by the parser and then I was forced to find something similar. It was a good way to learn synonyms and different ways to construct a sentence.
I remember playing a textual game featuring The Incredible Hulk on the Commodore 64 and that I had to learn new words in order to proceed.
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Could someone make a real example where you had the correct solution but couldn’t figure out how the parser wanted it? right now I can’t remember exact cases. I had a few, but I don’t remember them being frustrating and I don’t remember what they were…
One time the parser didn’t accept “lift” but it accepted “elevator”. (or vice-versa, I don’t remember very well now)
A noun? wow. how can this happen? In the room description, you must have read either “lift” or “elevator”, so how can you have doubts about it?