The pot of oil, from the atlas: oil is the fear mechanic and the double
fry is the physics, not the flavour text. Cold oil soaks (grease). Hot
oil seals — and the seal is REAL: past ~0.8 gold the crust shuts and the
inside stops listening, so one screaming-hot fry gives you 'firm in the
middle — the seal beat the cook'. The honest path is the card's path:
blanch in the shimmer until fluffy, REST on the rack while the steam
escapes (dryness is what golds — the oil spends it, the rack rebuilds
it), then back in HOT for the colour. The basket knocks the oil down a
full degree when it lands, because thermal mass does not care about
your schedule.
THE SPIT is the knuckle lesson with a floor: raw chips in oil past 8.4
throw it back, and a spit only burns the hand PARKED OVER THE POT — the
pointer is your hand, and standing back costs nothing. The judge's row
reads 'it spat 13 times; you did not flinch' or names exactly what the
hovering cost you.
First cut had two dead spots the adversarial pass caught: the seal was
too weak (a single hot fry still cooked through for 9.1) and the spit
window was unreachable (the basket-knock kept the oil under SPIT_AT for
the whole raw phase). Rebalanced: seal 1.25x, gold rate up, spit at 8.4.
Verified: double-fry 10.0 ('proper gold · fluffy inside · dry. drained.
correct · 2 fries — as the card says'); one-hot-fry-hand-hovering 7.6
with 13 burns. Day 24 on the card, procedural arm, ghost demo slot 24,
hero_chips on the scorecard, Ray's portrait already on the ticket.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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