diff --git a/PROJECT.md b/PROJECT.md
index 10aa77f..88cc577 100644
--- a/PROJECT.md
+++ b/PROJECT.md
@@ -452,6 +452,19 @@ followed you onto the silent menu.
 it, and ducks both court beds. `ambient()` and `zombieMusic()` un-duck themselves for the same
 reason — the SECOND run would otherwise have been played in the silence the menu left them in.
 
+**A BED MUST RESUME THE CONTEXT WHEN IT FINISHES LOADING, NOT ONLY WHEN IT IS ASKED FOR.** The
+second half of the report — *"sometimes, when initially entering the game and tapping somewhere,
+the background music does not start; I suspect the sound is not yet loaded"* — and he had it
+exactly right. The tap unlocks the context and starts a 768 KB fetch; the `src.start()` that
+follows happens seconds later inside a promise, with no gesture anywhere near it. iOS suspends an
+idle context in that gap, and **a source started into a suspended context is silent forever** —
+nothing on the splash calls `audio()` again, so the theme simply never arrived. `loopBed` now calls
+`audio()` a second time in its `.then`, which is allowed because the first tap already unlocked the
+context. That is why it was intermittent: it only bites when the decode outlasts the browser's
+patience, i.e. a phone on a cold cache. A `visibilitychange` resume covers the same trap from the
+other end (a phone that locks ON THE MENU came back silent; during play every pock resumes it for
+free, but a title screen makes no sound of its own).
+
 **...and each of those un-ducks ITS OWN BED ONLY.** The first cut had `ambient()` un-duck both
 court beds together, which put the splatter music back on in classic tennis for the rest of the
 session — Oliver caught it on the retest: *"after playing the splatter gore, the zombie background
diff --git a/index.html b/index.html
index 1187c84..68ed74a 100644
--- a/index.html
+++ b/index.html
@@ -564,6 +564,6 @@ if (location.hostname !== 'splatter-tennis.wuwi.one') {
     </div>
   </div>
 </div>
-<script type="module" src="src/main.js?v=263"></script>
+<script type="module" src="src/main.js?v=264"></script>
 </body>
 </html>
diff --git a/src/audio.js b/src/audio.js
index 59353b6..17b6a52 100644
--- a/src/audio.js
+++ b/src/audio.js
@@ -145,6 +145,16 @@ function loopBed(file, lowcut, vol, loopEnd = 0) {
     .then(r => { if (!r.ok) throw 0; return r.arrayBuffer(); })
     .then(ab => ac.decodeAudioData(ab))
     .then(buf => {
+      // RESUME AGAIN, HERE. The gesture that unlocked the context is long gone by now: the menu
+      // theme is 768 KB of AAC and a phone can spend seconds fetching and decoding it, and iOS
+      // suspends an idle context in the meantime. A source started into a suspended context is
+      // silent FOREVER — nothing on the splash ever calls audio() again, so the theme simply never
+      // arrived (Oliver, 2026-08-15: "sometimes, when initially entering the game and tapping
+      // somewhere, the background music does not start — I suspect the sound is not yet loaded").
+      // It is allowed: the context was already unlocked by that first tap, so a later resume() is
+      // no longer gated. This is why it was intermittent — it only bites when the decode outlasts
+      // the browser's patience, which is a phone, a cold cache and a slow radio.
+      audio();
       const src = ac.createBufferSource(); src.buffer = buf; src.loop = true;
       // loopEnd = the source's TRUE length, for a bed that is compressed. AAC pads the last packet,
       // and Chrome hands back a buffer ~17 ms longer than the master — silence spliced in at every
@@ -217,10 +227,18 @@ export const menuDuck = out => fadeBed('background-music.m4a', out);
 // BOTH court beds as one gesture, because "leaving the court" is one event and the two of them
 // have to move together — the menu was silent AND noisy at the same time when only one did.
 const courtDuck = out => { fadeBed('tennis-ambient-loop.wav', out); zombieDuck(out); };
+// THE SAME TRAP FROM THE OTHER END: iOS suspends the context while the app is in the
+// background, so a phone that locks on the menu comes back silent. During PLAY this fixes itself —
+// every pock and every umpire line goes through audio(), which resumes — but a title screen makes
+// no sound of its own and nothing wakes it until you tap something. Guarded on AC already existing,
+// so this can never CREATE a context outside a gesture and leave a suspended one lying around.
+if (typeof document !== 'undefined')
+  document.addEventListener('visibilitychange', () => { if (!document.hidden && AC) audio(); });
+
 // Test surface (test.js), same idea as net.js's netTest. `ducked` is the INTENT — the level a bed
 // is at, or will start at if it is still loading — and it is the whole of what the menu-silence bug
-// was: a flag nothing ever cleared. Nothing in the game reads this.
-export const bedTest = { ducked };
+// was: a flag nothing ever cleared. Nothing in the game reads any of this.
+export const bedTest = { ducked, beds, ac: () => AC };
 
 let sysVoice = null;
 function say(text, delay = 0) { // fallback when a recorded umpire line is missing
diff --git a/src/render.js b/src/render.js
index 540185d..3070cf9 100644
--- a/src/render.js
+++ b/src/render.js
@@ -221,7 +221,7 @@ function farB(z) {
 // Asset cache-buster — bump with main.js?v=N (see the img.src note below). EXPORTED because the
 // menu screens hang <img> tags on the same files, and two copies of this number is one copy too
 // many: the one that does not get bumped is the one that serves a cached 404.
-export const SPRV = 131;
+export const SPRV = 132;
 // The boot bar in main.js watches this. Nothing here CHANGES when things load — every sprite was
 // already requested at import — it just makes the wait visible and holds the menu back until the
 // last sheet has landed. See the onerror note below for the other half of "sometimes missing".