29 August 2026 · nothing written to the corpus · the glossary would go from 10 to 19
The strategy now lives on the con, one decision per character. Seventeen of the
thirty are mapped. Thirteen were not, and four of those turn out not to need one:
The Fumbler and The Doubler are Wager-only slips with no playbook and nothing that beats them
but care, and the Innocent is not a con at all. The Volunteer maps onto the existing
S-TARGET-CHECK — "re-read exactly what the question asks for" already covers
re-reading what the stem asks a sentence to do.
That leaves nine, each one compressed from the con's own first_move
so the glossary and the dossier cannot drift.
| Code and button label | The move, as the player reads it | Cut from |
|---|---|---|
S-STRIP-TO-THE-SUBJECTStrip to the subject |
Cut everything sitting between the subject and its verb, then read what is left. | The Mismatch Strip the interrupting phrase and match the verb to the true subject. |
S-WHO-IS-DOING-ITAsk who is doing it |
Ask who or what is performing the opening description, then check that it is the subject of the main clause. | The Dangler Find the noun right after the comma — the opening phrase must describe it. |
S-EVERY-CLAUSECheck every clause |
Read the choice to the end and verify each clause on its own. One wrong clause kills the whole choice. | The Half-Truth Read the choice end to end and verify every clause — one wrong clause kills it. |
S-NAME-THE-TESTName what it is testing |
Say what the sentence is actually testing — tense, form, reference — then check that one thing against the passage rather than against your ear. | The Ear Check the one thing the sentence is testing, against the passage rather than against your ear. |
S-PIN-THE-DIRECTIONPin the direction |
Fix which way the passage runs — for or against, rising or falling — before you read a single choice. | The Contrarian Pin the passage's direction — for or against, rising or falling — before reading the choices. |
S-POINT-AT-THE-LINEPoint at the line |
Name the line on the page that makes the choice true. No line, no answer. | The Embellisher Demand a specific line in the passage that backs the choice — no line, no answer. |
S-PHRASE-BY-PHRASETranslate phrase by phrase |
Turn the words into symbols one phrase at a time — 'more than', 'of', 'is' — before solving anything. | The Mistranslator Translate one phrase at a time — 'more than,' 'of,' 'is' — into symbols. |
S-SAY-IT-WHOLESay it whole |
Say the phrase aloud with the blank filled. Idiom and register fail out loud before they fail on paper. | The Understudy Say the phrase aloud in full; idiom and register fail out loud before they fail on paper. |
S-ORDER-FIRSTSettle the order first |
Settle the order of operations before you compute anything. | The Wrench Fix the order of operations before you touch the arithmetic. |
These are strings a student reads, and nine of them nearly doubles a player-facing vocabulary. They are also not written to the corpus yet, deliberately: another session committing mid-review would sweep unapproved entries into the bank, which is how eleven Go Undercover rounds ended up inside a Hopper commit on Thursday.
Nine strategy-glossary entries, each with a code, the
prose above as its stem, and a move_label for Snap Call's second beat.
The nine cons then carry a strategy and the whole cast is covered. The Volunteer
takes S-TARGET-CHECK without a new entry.
S-STRIP-TO-THE-SUBJECT,
S-WHO-IS-DOING-IT and S-NAME-THE-TEST all sit in Writing grammar
and could arguably be one move — "find what the sentence is really about before you judge
it". Three is more precise and one is more memorable.S-PHRASE-BY-PHRASE and S-ORDER-FIRST follow that,
S-WHO-IS-DOING-IT is longer than anything currently in the list.