EXP9 — grading the child's taste, and the rulers bent

Raw table (solar graph vs nursery ground truths)

target	volunteered	GED cost	preserved	WL
feedback3	YES	1.0	0.833	0.050
cycle3	YES	5.0	0.375	0.050
tree	YES	8.0	0.273	0.036
inversion	no	5.0	0.375	0.050
diamond	no	7.0	0.300	0.042
chain	no	6.0	0.333	0.287

Verdict: INCONCLUSIVE — the measurement failed before the child could

1. GED unreliability exposed in its own table: cycle3 and feedback3 are ISOMORPHIC (the designed near-miss family) yet scored 5.0 and 1.0 against the same probe. optimize_edit_paths' first-yield approximation is not stable enough to grade taste. A comparator scoring isomorphic targets differently is disqualified from verdicts.
2. The metrics rank oppositely: by GED, volunteered beats control (4.67 vs 6.0 avg cost); by WL, control beats volunteered (0.126 vs 0.045) — driven by chain, the path-shaped twin of the solar graph, which the child did NOT volunteer. Third consecutive experiment where metric choice flips the verdict (EXP3-run2 P2, EXP4, now EXP9).

What survives the wreckage

• Tantalizing, unconfirmed: the child's tank-gauge-valve overlay (feedback3) is the CHEAPEST mapping on the board under GED — if that holds under a repaired comparator, the child's first volunteered correspondence was also its best. Held, not believed.
• Metric honesty is promoted from queue to BLOCKING. Three experiments have now had their verdicts hostage to comparator choice. No further taste/correspondence claims until the comparators are calibrated on known-isomorphic and known-distant pairs with stability tests. The instrument must distinguish its own lenses before it may grade a child's eyesight — §116's founding demand, now overdue.