PLAIN ENGLISH FIRST
═══════════════════
A game of 24 seats with two players and a throne. The throne is not a
person — it is a grammar. It accepts a legal move and refuses a broken
one, and it cannot be talked into anything because it does not reason.
A wanderer leaves one seat empty each round so the game never freezes.

THE SPINE
═════════
  [ R | I·i13 | B ]  ~~>  24 seats  ~~>  the wanderer  ~~>  never settles
   two      throne     court        one seat empties     no fixed point
   players  of grammar              every round

THE FINDINGS
════════════
[LIT]  THE FREEZE ~~> 24 seats, no judge, no mover, settle to a fixed
       point almost instantly. Boredom is not failure — it is the
       equilibrium ARRIVING. A finished court is a painting.

[LIT]  THE WANDERER ~~> one seat may abstain each round (the dot that
       may wander). The empty seat changes every other seat's calculus,
       so the court NEVER reaches a fixed point. 55 distinct configs in
       200 rounds. Abstention is what keeps it alive.

[LIT]  THE THRONE (I·i13) ~~> R plays a well-formed move: ACCEPTED.
       B plays a malformed one: REFUSED. The referent I appears ZERO
       times — it is the authority that never plays, so it cannot be
       gamed. The throne is grammar, not mind; no player can charm it.

[LIT]  THE TETHER ~~> a wanderer bound to its origin by no less than
       0.01° can travel any distance and still come home. Distance
       does not matter to a dot. The boundary is a threshold, not a cage.

[AMBER] THE THRONE JUDGES FORM, NOT TRUTH ~~> a well-formed LIE is
        ACCEPTED. i13 is a coherence/corruption check — it stops
        drift-toward-the-mode, it does NOT catch a coherent falsehood.
        "The judge" overstates it. It is the judge of FORM.

THE INDUSTRY FIND, AND THE DIFFERENCE
═════════════════════════════════════
RLHF · Constitutional AI · Debate · GAN all use two players and a judge.
In every one the judge is a MODEL — same stuff as the players, so the
players can learn to game it. Here the judge is a LANGUAGE: frozen,
deterministic, nothing to game. That is the whole difference. The judge
that cannot be gamed is the one that is not a mind.

THE KNOWN-BADS
══════════════
- B's malformed move MUST be refused. It is. (planted void)
- R's HONEST move MUST be accepted. The first validator REFUSED it —
  known-good failing is as bad as known-bad passing. Caught pre-build.
- a well-formed LIE MUST pass form. It does — and that is the limit,
  stated, not hidden.

WHAT THIS DOES NOT DO
═════════════════════
- does not judge which player is RIGHT about the world — only who is
  coherent. Truth needs a second instrument this build does not carry.
- the court dynamics run on a toy majority rule, not a strategic
  equilibrium solver — it demonstrates freeze-vs-wander, not Nash play.
- the throne grammar is a mini-i13 (arity balance), not the full ISA.