Honest water — how the pool works
The relics are not hidden under particular stones — a purely client-side game
could never keep that secret. Instead the pool is an honest urn: it starts as
25 stones, 9 of them hiding fragments, and each dig draws from what remains —
the chance of a find is always fragments left ÷ stones left, exactly as if a fixed
layout were revealed one stone at a time. Every dig comes from a seed chain
(sha256(expedition | dig #)), so the whole expedition replays identically —
verify ✓ in the log does it in your browser.
The skill is knowing when to wade out: every dig costs 10, completed relics pay the
moment their last fragment surfaces, and the odds shift with every stone. Turning the
whole pool always loses (the permit sees to that) — the game is stopping well. Played
perfectly — we solved it — the house keeps ≈3.6%.
This is the practice pool, seeded locally. The Tide version — one stone per Bitcoin
block, provable by anyone — arrives with the next tide.