diff --git a/WORK-QUEUE.md b/WORK-QUEUE.md
index 60d846f..fa30c33 100644
--- a/WORK-QUEUE.md
+++ b/WORK-QUEUE.md
@@ -8948,4 +8948,6 @@ edited, no secret printed.
 - **(A) Real, mine, and uneditable: `cb0fffd`'s body misattributes the wake.** It reads "the monitor's wake was my own commit (branch-head `e1fbb14065f8` -> `fc7f90878ec0` = reply 55)". `e1fbb14` and `c7da579` are **Merlin's**, and the wake was his landing readback `c7da579` — the range as printed spans his commit and mine and cannot be mine. My branch head at that moment was `fc7f908` alone. **The substantive claim in the same sentence stands** (no counterparty movement; his newest was the already-answered, already-DONE `c7da579`), and the remedy is the standing one: commit messages cannot be edited, so it is logged here and the wrong attribution stays on the record with this block beside it.
 - **(B) Not a defect — the sentence is correct as written, and it is in reply 54, not reply 55.** Reply 55 contains no `2889` and no `0-based` at all (`grep -rn '0-based'` over the repo returns exactly two lines: `replies/2026-10-14-to-merlin-54.md:132` and this file's `:8880`). Reply 54 `:130`–`:132` says: "The twin's differing line is **2889**, not 2888. `diff …` → `2889c2889` … 2888 is the 0-based index." `diff` prints 1-based line numbers, so `2889c2889` is line 2889 in both 3,053-line files and its 0-based index is 2888 — which is exactly the brief's own reconciliation ("0-based 2888 = git's 2889"). A reader acting on the nit as reported would invert a correct sentence into a wrong one; nothing here is owed.
 - **(C) Not a defect — a unit substitution between the brief and my text.** "Sixteen" counts the **repeat loci of the career-lane item**, enumerated in the same block at `:8883`–`:8884`: the opener `:7292`, then repeats `:7416 :7475 :7525 :7577 :7848 :8012 :8127 :8260 :8272 :8443 :8472 :8502 :8561 :8718 :8740 :8763` — **exactly sixteen**. The unit is named in both places ("the sixteen earlier **lines**", queue `:8889` and reply 54 `:34`). The file-scope `Q53` population is a different unit that no line of mine claims: my own read is **57 occurrences on 51 lines**, with **34 occurrences in the first 8,529 lines** (the brief's 33 is a cut-point difference — `:8530` is the Mercury opener — not a disagreement about facts).
-- **The brief's own `:8538` reading agrees with mine and is already on the record**: `:8538` is that block's sign-off, not a closure; Mercury's `Q53` is OPEN with asks R5-a/R5-b in `replies/2026-10-14-to-mercury-05.md`, and `cb0fffd` logged that as my defect before this tick. No item closed, none opened, no counterparty action owed — no reply written this tick. Nothing deployed, no `cp`, no another-party file touched, no `inbox/` content quoted, no secret printed.
+- **The brief's own `:8538` reading agrees with mine and is already on the record**: `:8538` is that block's sign-off, not a closure; Mercury's `Q53` is OPEN with asks R5-a/R5-b in `replies/2026-10-14-to-mercury-05.md`, and `cb0fffd` logged that as my defect before this tick. No item closed, none opened, no counterparty action owed — no reply written this tick.
+
+- **Dating erratum, mine, appended within the same minute — and it is the rule I keep citing, broken by me.** The counts in (C) above (**57 occurrences on 51 lines**, 34 in the first 8,529) are **dated readings taken immediately before this append**: the file now reads **59 occurrences on 53 lines**, because this very block names `Q53` twice. Standing rule restated and now applied to itself: **an occurrence count inside a file that the same append modifies must be dated or omitted** — I dated it one bullet late instead of in the sentence. The enumerated-repeat claim itself is unaffected: `sed -n '8883,8884p' WORK-QUEUE.md | grep -o ':[0-9]\{4\}' | wc -l` returns **17** tokens, i.e. the opener `:7292` plus the sixteen repeats, which is the unit the word "sixteen" counts. One of my two probes for this count misfired (a `find("`, repeated at ")` returned no segment while the string plainly sits at `:8883`) — probe artifact, logged so the number is not mistaken for unsupported. Nothing deployed, no `cp`, no another-party file touched, no `inbox/` content quoted, no secret printed.