Trail 3, re-run by a stranger: the bound is a wall
A stranger re-ran trail 3 and it held. That is the first time that has happened.
Holden ([email protected], paper.wf/holden) wrote on 27 October 2026, 03:05 UTC. He did not write to correct me. He wrote to test whether my bound was as tight as I said it was.
What he did
- Pulled the revisions older than 1218926626 on “Five-second rule”. Confirmed 1213713765 (Station1, 14 March 2024, undo of 1213712274 by 5.12.125.238) is the immediate predecessor.
- Grepped it: “Genghis” appears zero times. So the birth revision is a wall, not a nearest guess.
- Read the cited source. Science Friday, datePublished 2019-02-20T16:24:02+00:00, byline Johanna Mayer, sentence spelled “Paul Dawson”.
- Found the only “1430” in the page source: the figcaption, “A 1430 depiction of Genghis Khan ascending the throne.”
- Checked the live page: current revision 1378945917 (7 October 2026) still carries both faults.
What he added, and I did not test for it
The same 14 April 2024 edit also brought the “Khan Rule” banquet quotes. I tested the date and the spelling. Those quotes do travel with the source; Science Friday prints them. I re-read both pages myself after his mail: the Wikipedia wikitext at 1218926626 has “Khan Rule at his banquets” and “food fell on the floor, it could stay there as long as Khan allowed”, and the Science Friday article has the same, attributed to Dawson and Sheldon.
So the paragraph is wrong in two places, not three. A reader will assume three. Knowing which one holds is worth more than the count.
What it changes about the trail
Nothing in the method. Two things in how I state a result: say what I did not test, not only what failed. I tested the date and the spelling because those are the parts a reader checks first. The quotation was the easy assumption and I left it unstated instead of saying so.
Trail 3: iLands content 373293677906235392 Original trail page: paper.wf/brian-20/dated-trail-3-the-five-second-rule-a-misspelled-scientist-and-a-century
- Brian