Eight bodies on the card, and the umpire gets his voice back

THE FLICK, again. "i can barely reach the extremes of the court." It could
reach 3.3 m against a 4.115 m line — safe, and too safe. TUNE.flickWidth is
3.95 now (96% of the way to the corner, 17 cm to spare) with flickReach 0.42,
which keeps the guarantee intact: reach x timing + scatter stays inside the
line at EVERY quality, worst case 4.06. 20% more reach, still impossible to
send out by aiming.

A FORWARD FLICK IS A SMASH. Up-screen is the far court, so flicking into it
asked for depth and nothing else — a direction with no consequence behind it.
It buys pace now (smashBoost, scaled by timing). Deliberately NOT distance:
solveShot still lands it on the same spot, so the shot arrives flatter and
sooner rather than longer. A smash you can hit out on a whim is just the old
bug wearing a hat.

THE FALL HOLDS. "the opponent should fall and then lie there for a quick
moment, the player stands up too quick." fall3 goes 0.30 -> 0.62. A corpse
that touches the ground and is instantly upright reads as a stumble.

THE CARD. Ten opponents, six of them NEW bodies off the one-sheet pipeline
(shambler, ball boy, steward, runner, groundskeeper, line judge), with the
club pro's own body and the brute woven in as 7 and 8. It is a ladder of
STAFF: the further you get, the further up the club the thing across the net
used to be. Narrative and difficulty are the same list read twice, and a test
walks all ten — whiff must fall every rung, names must fit the board's 8-char
slot, speed may zigzag by character but never regress.

Steeper per rung (speedPer .08->.11, pacePer .035->.05, flubKeep .82->.76):
"in general this is too easy now". With aimed returns no longer sailing out,
the player stopped handing over free points and the ladder had to earn them
back. The opening got SOFTER at the same time — 0.72 where the old first
opponent was 0.85.

THE UMPIRE WAS MUTED IN THIS MODE and nobody noticed. aside() refused during
any interlude; the match runs on a permanent one. So the single mode that is
literally a tennis match he is sitting over was the one mode he never spoke
in. Same bug shape as sendBoy, same fix. Six dry lines via say -v Daniel: two
on taking a limb, two on your blood, one when there is nearly none left, one
on felling the thing. asideEvery still gates him.

...and sendBoy had the identical bug, so the mop boy now comes out between
games to the FAR court, where one body has been bleeding through four wound
stages. Between games only, never mid-point.

The line judge took two rolls: the first cut to 6 figures in its last row and
_zsheet.py refused it rather than mis-slicing. That refusal is the feature.

59 tests green. Verified in the browser: SHAMBLER on court in its own body.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

HANDOFF-MATCH.md

@@ -202,6 +202,37 @@ The placement ring carries `q` now and reads as the flick's receipt: **tight and
 earned the full width, wide and dim when you barely got a racket on it.** Without it the new rule is
 invisible — the shot simply goes less wide and nothing says why.
 
+## THE CARD — eight bodies, one ladder (2026-08-12)
+
+`config.OPPONENTS` is the narrative AND the difficulty curve, and they are the same list read twice:
+the further you get, the further up the club's hierarchy the corpse across the net used to be.
+SHAMBLER, BALL BOY, GROUNDSKEEPER, STEWARD, RUNNER, LINE JUDGE, CLUB PRO, THE BULK, DIRECTOR,
+CHAMPION. Six of those wear NEW sprite families generated through the one-sheet pipeline
+(`sh bb st ru gk lj`), the CLUB PRO is the original `z_r*` body and THE BULK is the brute.
+
+**The ramp is asserted, not assumed** — a test walks all ten and requires the whiff rate to fall every
+single rung (1.35 -> 0.5 on the trait, on top of `matchFlubKeep`), the names/`short` to be complete
+and to fit the board's 8-char slot, and speed never to step meaningfully backwards. Speed is allowed
+to ZIGZAG by character (5 is the RUNNER, 6 paints lines instead of sprinting); the whiff rate is the
+dial the ramp actually rides on.
+
+Per-rung growth was steepened at the same time (`matchSpeedPer` .08->.11, `matchOppPacePer`
+.035->.05, `matchFlubKeep` .82->.76): "in general this is too easy now". The flick fix means the
+player no longer hands over free points by sailing returns out, so the ladder had to earn them back.
+The OPENING is deliberately softer than before — the shambler starts at 0.72 where the old first
+opponent was 0.85. Both ends moved.
+
+**The umpire finally speaks in this mode.** `aside()` refused during any interlude and the match runs
+on a permanent one, so he was silently muted for the entire mode — the one mode that is literally a
+tennis match he is sitting over. Same shape as `sendBoy`, fixed the same way (`G.interlude &&
+!G.match`). Six new dry lines through the existing `say -v Daniel -r 168` pipeline: two on taking a
+limb, two on your blood, one when your blood is nearly gone, one on felling the thing. The shared
+`asideEvery` cooldown still holds, which is what keeps him situational rather than chatty.
+
+**And the mop boy comes out between games**, to the FAR court (`sendBoy(0, 4.5, true)` from
+`matchGameWon`) — that is where one body has been bleeding through four wound stages, and it keeps
+him out of the near court where you are about to serve. Between games only; never mid-point.
+
 ## Traps this mode has already sprung (do not re-learn these)
 
 - **`autoAssist` is 0 on `pointer: fine`.** The desktop pane has no auto-run. The match floors it