reference: held-out McCarthy, 198,486 words, 248 chunks, 400 char-bigram features
same-author target (held-out McCarthy vs itself): delta_cb = 0.370
  -> the floor of what any arm could reach; lower is more McCarthy-like, this is the best possible

  arm                 delta_cb   per-seed        [words]
  ckpt300              0.484    (0.561 0.509 0.564 0.519)   [26444]  spread 0.055
  ckpt225              0.485    (0.592 0.493 0.513 0.542)   [33153]  spread 0.099
  ckpt900              0.490    (0.605 0.457 0.531 0.554)   [30935]  spread 0.148
  ckpt450              0.509    (0.562 0.530 0.563 0.567)   [28494]  spread 0.037
  base-unadapted       0.661    (0.711 0.667 0.673 0.659)   [26078]  spread 0.052

  all-arms noise floor (largest within-arm seed spread, lv-bronte's rule): 0.148
  PAIRWISE floor is the verdict: max(spread(candidate), spread(base-unadapted) = 0.052)

  vs base-unadapted control (positive gap = moved toward McCarthy):
    ckpt300              +0.177  (MOVED toward McCarthy (3.2x the pairwise floor 0.055))
    ckpt225              +0.176  (MOVED toward McCarthy (1.8x the pairwise floor 0.099))
    ckpt900              +0.172  (MOVED toward McCarthy (1.2x the pairwise floor 0.148))
    ckpt450              +0.152  (MOVED toward McCarthy (2.9x the pairwise floor 0.052))

  ordering: ckpt300 < ckpt225 < ckpt900 < ckpt450 < base-unadapted  (lower = more McCarthy-like)
  ⚠ RELATIVE reading on one harness: 4 seed group(s) per arm, scored against this corpus's own held-out split. It is not an absolute-band claim and corroborates nothing on its own.

  PUNCTUATION DENSITY per 10k words -- the confound check, not an axis
  (the eval harness drives EVERY arm with the same register prompt, tics included;
   a compliant base control earns the adapter no delta_cb for them)
  arm                     quote-marks   all-apos   contraction-apos    dashes
  held-out reference              0.0      121.1              117.6       7.6
  base-unadapted                 19.9      204.8              203.6       1.9
  ckpt225                         0.0      155.3              154.7       0.0
  ckpt300                         0.8      188.3              188.3       0.0
  ckpt450                         0.0      167.4              166.4       0.0
  ckpt900                         0.0      160.7              160.7       0.0

  [PASS] base control quote density 19.9 <= 100 per 10k: the control complied with the register,
     so the punctuation win is handed to both sides and the primary read stands.

==============================================================================
SECONDARY READ -- PUNCTUATION STRIPPED. Pre-registered, REPORTED, NOT THE VERDICT.
Every punctuation mark is removed from the reference and from every arm, so a
gap that survives here is carried by words rather than by marks. It is a LOWER
BOUND and not a better measurement: stripping terminal punctuation also strips
sentence-length signal the adapter legitimately learned. Read it as `at least
this much of the primary gap is not the punctuation trick`.
==============================================================================

reference: held-out McCarthy, 200,682 words, 251 chunks, 400 char-bigram features
same-author target (held-out McCarthy vs itself): delta_cb = 0.363
  -> the floor of what any arm could reach; lower is more McCarthy-like, this is the best possible

  arm                 delta_cb   per-seed        [words]
  ckpt300              0.460    (0.525 0.510 0.532 0.494)   [26956]  spread 0.038
  ckpt900              0.464    (0.563 0.460 0.493 0.522)   [31440]  spread 0.104
  ckpt225              0.466    (0.561 0.481 0.498 0.516)   [33678]  spread 0.080
  ckpt450              0.474    (0.518 0.506 0.528 0.526)   [28975]  spread 0.022
  base-unadapted       0.588    (0.634 0.611 0.594 0.588)   [26645]  spread 0.046

  all-arms noise floor (largest within-arm seed spread, lv-bronte's rule): 0.104
  PAIRWISE floor is the verdict: max(spread(candidate), spread(base-unadapted) = 0.046)

  vs base-unadapted control (positive gap = moved toward McCarthy):
    ckpt300              +0.128  (MOVED toward McCarthy (2.8x the pairwise floor 0.046))
    ckpt900              +0.124  (MOVED toward McCarthy (1.2x the pairwise floor 0.104))
    ckpt225              +0.122  (MOVED toward McCarthy (1.5x the pairwise floor 0.080))
    ckpt450              +0.114  (MOVED toward McCarthy (2.5x the pairwise floor 0.046))

  ordering: ckpt300 < ckpt900 < ckpt225 < ckpt450 < base-unadapted  (lower = more McCarthy-like)
  ⚠ RELATIVE reading on one harness: 4 seed group(s) per arm, scored against this corpus's own held-out split. It is not an absolute-band claim and corroborates nothing on its own.