I think that there is a room status message and a command response , both of which have the response limit applied to them. That said, the top right of the screen (status bar) can sometimes be employed as an additional passive status indicator.
At the end of the day, the judges will judge the minimalism. Your baseline implementation is TWO. If you want to try to exploit ambiguity in the number of allowed responses, you can do that, but a judge may see that as less minimal than not trying an exploit