the same as if you had 80 objects. That’s all I am saying. 
You aren’t very good in math? 
I’m not
There are many, infinite, options. This depends on the given situation you’re in afterwards.
Are you playing one of the cops (who might in the future do some research upfront and give a telephone call before showing up at sensible people’s places)? Are you John’s widow who wants to sue the cop because he was known for his aggressive behavior towards John due to …? Are you John’s therapist and alter your medication for other clients silently? …
Feel free to assume what you prefer (you are a cop, or the widow, therapist, whatever). Do any assumptions you find useful.
Because I can’t see a solution under any assumption. 
So if you give me a case where with SCUMM I can be sure the player has made the connection, I will be happy.
there would be no verb “pour”. We are talking about unary verbs. The verb pour is binary, “pour X on Y”. We are talking about “listen to X”, “climb X”, “enter X”, “push X”, “open X”… these behave like objects.
binary verbs would not be there: you would just combine the two objects.
pour quoi?
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I can pour a bowl of water everywhere I like. But feel free to chose a different verb, for example “drink”:
“You see that you have a liquid that is green and radioactive. Your brain knows instantly that you could drink that liquid. But what if you just read the verb ‘drink’?”
Ok, drink is good, but now I don’t get your objection.
What is wrong with putting the “drink” verb in the inventory (in iconic + subtitle form) together with all the objects?
just like you can combine the bottle-opener with the bottle, you can combine the drink verb with the bottle. I can’t think of a reason why the first is accepted and the second isn’t.
If you show a scene which suggests that John killed himself, the player gets the hint, he can act accordingly, like I wrote above. This might be a direct move, like, acting as the therapist directly or you could trigger events, like, the widow is talking to friends of John and his sister at the funeral. His sister thought he was in suicidal mood since quite some time but one of the friends says that he can’t believe it. It’s up to you how you continue this conversation, to visit a lawyer, argue with him and start things rolling or wep and let things go.
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Nothing. (Maybe we are discussing different things at the moment :)) I referred to the fact that it’s easier for the player to deal with 40 objects and that is more difficult to deal with 40 verbs. Especially it’s not easy for the human brain to deduce a solution from the verbs, even if you present them as icons. I just wanted to give an example why this is true.
What about nullary verbs? Like, who knows, “dance”.
Or what about modifiers? Something like what Little Big Adventure did - if you’re angry or aggressive, “close door” has a different effect than when you’re calm or stealthy.
It’s natural to collect items but not verbs. What you could collect is the idea of using an object in an ususally unfamiliar way.
Example: There is a trumpet, a monkey and a football. You can pickup, lookat and kick all three objects (sorry monkey). You can make sound with all of them (bouncing the ball, tickling the monkey and by blowing the trumpet) but you wouldn’t want to bounce the monkey, drink the football or tickle the trumpet.
You could make a riddle by, if you got the knowledge/the idea to drink from the trumpet jikes, after borrowing yours to the trumpet player of the band tonight (and took away his own trumpet before). But again, offering more options without a context related selection and//or without a sexy thought through presentation is likely to feel like work.
It all makes a difference and ideally you want the best possible interface and puzzels, so, yes, go for something new, but don’t forget that it’s also about the story, the characters and the fun of the puzzles which can be defined in various ways, partly regardless of the interface you end up with.
Although tickling the trumpet also could be a way to play the instrument in specific wanted way.
btw: This is “dangerous” because the player can’t predict what happens next. For example if you talk to a person in “Return to Zork” you can only chose between different moods (angry, friendly, etc.). But you can’t predict how the persons react if you chose “angry” which makes it difficult to solve the corresponding puzzle.
verb: dance
object: night sky
constructed sentence: dance the night away!
Then a dancing animation and it gets bright again.
We´ll include that one in our adventure, okay? 
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actually the “scream” or “whistle” could be nice nullary verbs, useful if you’re in jail or something. I’d put them in the inventory, like the others, but when you click them they don’t ask for the second object, but perform the action right away.
I hate those adventures where you can´t choose a sentence but only a style. You´re as surprised as the person you´re talking to by what exactly your character says. I don´t like that because often I don´t agree with the content at all and I would have liked to have known that beforehand.
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That’s what I meant: You hand the control of the discussion over to the game. It would work, if the game tells you the sentences that it would use at the corresponding mood.
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But 30 inventory objects are overwhelming! Especially when you don’t have a fullscreen-inventory.
Btw. those were fixed a long time ago!
I did play Broken Age but otherwise I haven’t played a lot of such games. I don’t remember any specific bad puzzle implementations.
In the end there is no real difference if you use a spell like in Loom, or you use/read a magic scroll from your inventory or even use a master key from your inventory to open something.
Bad puzzle example btw.: Such bottle can be opened with ANYTHING, like an eye socket
But it’s also natural to learn new skills and abilities, aka verbs. It’s mostly used in RPGs but also sometimes in adventure games.