The Difficulty Curve — the cover plate A deep plate. The deck's name is set large across the upper left above a gold rule. Beneath it the whole reading is drawn small as a profile of eighteen ambient columns: low at the left, two of them absent and marked only by a small ring, rising through the middle, and highest at the far right. DIMENSION 11 · THE UNIT: THE LOGGED QUESTION The Difficulty Curve Eighteen episodes · 245 placed questions One reader. Every question kept. 8–17 July 2026 · n = 1 11 · DIFFICULTY CURVE Placed questions per episode, one first reading Eighteen columns on a common baseline, one per episode in reading order, each numbered below and carrying its count above. Episodes two and three have no column, only a small ring on the baseline. The columns rise through the middle of the book and are tallest at the end: forty at Circe, thirty-eight at Penelope, thirty-three at Ithaca. When a single episode is named, the rest of the field drops back to ambient and gives up its labels. PLACED QUESTIONS PER EPISODE · 245 IN ALL The curve 1 1 Telemachus 1 0 2 Nestor 0 0 3 Proteus 0 5 4 Calypso 5 2 5 Lotus Eaters 2 10 6 Hades 10 2 7 Aeolus 2 7 8 Lestrygonians 7 11 9 Scylla and Charybdis 11 14 10 Wandering Rocks 14 12 11 Sirens 12 24 12 Cyclops 24 12 13 Nausicaa 12 14 14 Oxen of the Sun 14 40 15 Circe 40 20 16 Eumaeus 20 33 17 Ithaca 33 38 18 Penelope 38 Placed questions only · 245 of 290 extracted 11 · DIFFICULTY CURVE Proteus, episode three: no placed questions One large open ring fills the left of the plate with a nought inside it, drawn at the size the plate's single fact deserves. A gold rule lies beneath the ring. To the right, two lines name episode three, Proteus, at zero placed questions, and below a hairline, episode two, Nestor, also at zero. PLACED QUESTIONS · EPISODE 3 OF EIGHTEEN Proteus 0 Episode 3 · Proteus 0 placed questions Episode 2 · Nestor 0 placed questions Both covered once, retrospectively · pdf 6 11 · DIFFICULTY CURVE Episodes eleven to fourteen, Sirens to Oxen of the Sun Four wide columns drawn at roughly five times the width of the same bars on the whole curve: Sirens twelve, Cyclops twenty-four, Nausicaa twelve, Oxen of the Sun fourteen. Each is named beneath and carries its count above. One gold rule runs the full width beneath all four. PLACED QUESTIONS · EPISODES 11 TO 14 Sirens to Oxen of the Sun 12 24 12 14 Sirens Cyclops Nausicaa Oxen of the Sun 12 · 24 · 12 · 14 placed questions 11 · DIFFICULTY CURVE Cyclops, the first half's highest, beside Circe The plate divides into two equal halves with a hairline down the channel between them. Each half holds one column drawn to the same scale: Cyclops, episode twelve, at twenty-four on the left; Circe, episode fifteen, at forty on the right. A gold rule sits beneath the Cyclops column alone. PLACED QUESTIONS · EPISODE 12 OF EIGHTEEN Cyclops THE FIRST HALF’S HIGHEST THE WHOLE READ’S HIGHEST 24 40 12 · Cyclops 15 · Circe 24 of 245 placed questions 11 · DIFFICULTY CURVE Circe, Ithaca and Penelope — the three highest counts Three very wide columns fill the plate: Circe at forty, Ithaca at thirty-three, Penelope at thirty-eight. Each is named with its episode number beneath and carries its count above. One gold rule runs the full width beneath the three. THE THREE HIGHEST · 40 · 33 · 38 Circe · Ithaca · Penelope 40 33 38 15 · Circe 17 · Ithaca 18 · Penelope 40 · 33 · 38 of 245 placed questions 11 · DIFFICULTY CURVE The nine kinds of question, by count Nine horizontal bars ranked by length, hanging from a single gold spine, each named at the left and carrying its count at the right: plot and orientation forty-eight, allusion and period forty-seven, curiosity and delight forty-two, style and form forty-one, vocabulary and wordplay twenty-five, voice and referent twenty-two, tone stance and significance fifteen, felt but not grasped six, dictation and transcription six. Two bars are drawn as outlines rather than solids — curiosity and delight, and dictation and transcription. Those two are not difficulty. NINE KINDS · 245 PLACED QUESTIONS The nine kinds plot and orientation allusion and period curiosity and delight style and form vocabulary and wordplay voice and referent tone, stance, significance felt but not grasped dictation and transcription 48 47 42 41 25 22 15 6 6 Outlined: not difficulty 11 · DIFFICULTY CURVE Dominant strains, nine kinds against eighteen episodes A matrix of nine named rows against eighteen numbered episode columns, hanging from a gold spine at the left of the grid. A solid square marks a dominant strain for that episode. Plot and orientation, allusion and period, and style and form carry the most marks. Felt but not grasped, and dictation and transcription, carry none as a dominant strain. NINE KINDS AGAINST EIGHTEEN EPISODES Dominant strains 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 1718 plot and orientation allusion and period style and form vocabulary and wordplay voice and referent tone, stance, significance curiosity and delight felt but not grasped dictation and transcription One primary kind per question 11 · DIFFICULTY CURVE Penelope, episode eighteen: thirty-eight placed questions The plate divides into two equal halves with a hairline down the channel. Twelve solid marks on the left are named curiosity and delight; seven solid marks of the same size on the right are named voice and referent. A gold rule runs beneath both. Below it, nineteen small ambient marks stand for the rest of the episode's thirty-eight questions. EPISODE 18 · 38 PLACED QUESTIONS Penelope 12 · curiosity and delight 7 · voice and referent The other nineteen 12 delight · 7 referent · 38 in all 11 · DIFFICULTY CURVE The sixteen dated exchanges Sixteen columns in date order, each carrying its count above and its exchange number below: one, four, nine, eight, eight, twenty-one, fourteen, twenty-three, fifteen, seventeen, eighteen, sixteen, thirty-three, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-nine. A gold rule carries them all. Beneath, hairline brackets group the exchanges by the day of July they were held, from the eighth to the seventeenth. SIXTEEN DATED EXCHANGES · JULY 2026 The sixteen exchanges 1 4 9 8 8 21 14 23 15 17 18 16 33 17 19 29 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1 to 33 questions each · 8–17 July 2026 11 · DIFFICULTY CURVE The Reading Companion: 117 pages, sixteen exchanges The whole record drawn as one long band running the full width of the plate, page one at the left and page 117 at the right. Sixteen heavy marks stand across it where each exchange begins, crowded together through the first quarter and spaced widely after page seventy-five. A gold rule carries the band, and a scale of page numbers runs beneath it. THE READING COMPANION · 117 PAGES The record 1 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 117 PDF PAGE → Sixteen exchanges · pdf 4 to 108 11 · DIFFICULTY CURVE The survival language: four pages of the record, magnified A detail of the record magnified more than three times, showing only pages twenty-five to sixty. A narrow strip at the top of the plate shows the whole 117-page record with the magnified window outlined on it, and two hairlines open out from that window to the full width below. Four heavy marks stand on the detail at pages 30, 31, 40 and 56, each labelled. A gold rule carries them. THE RECORD, PAGES 25 TO 60 OF 117 The survival language p.30 p.31 p.40 p.56 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 PDF PAGE → pdf 30 · 31 · 40 · 56 11 · DIFFICULTY CURVE Four entries that failed the strict verbatim check Four open rectangles stand in a row across the plate, one for each entry, drawn as outlines rather than solids because the wording could not be verified. Each carries its page address: pdf 10, pdf 39, pdf 109, pdf 110. A gold rule runs beneath the four, and a line below it reads: kept in the counts. FOUR ENTRIES · STRICT VERBATIM CHECK Failed verbatim check pdf 10 pdf 39 pdf 109 pdf 110 Kept in the counts 4 of 290 extracted entries 11 · DIFFICULTY CURVE Heard and meant: four dictation pairs The plate divides into two equal halves with a hairline down the channel. On the left, four phrases as the microphone heard them; on the right, what each turned out to be, with the page address at the far right. Hate speech became Hades at pdf 14; Lenin became a swindler at pdf 47; married to the crazy gnomes became a barmaid's line at pdf 31; unification became micturition at pdf 92. A gold rule runs beneath the four pairs, and a small drawn microphone stands at the lower left beside the line: kept as spoken, anchor A6. DICTATION AND TRANSCRIPTION NOISE · 6 QUESTIONS Heard and meant HEARD MEANT “hate speech” “Lenin” “Married to the crazy gnomes” “unification” Hades a swindler a barmaid’s line micturition PDF 14 PDF 47 PDF 31 PDF 92 Kept as spoken · anchor A6 6 questions · pdf 14 · 31 · 47 · 92 11 · DIFFICULTY CURVE

An audience deck. A question is not a unit of difficulty. Ulysses: a first reading · Dimension 11, The Difficulty Curve · the study.