Default Repertoire

# default-repertoire ban list — single source of truth
# Referenced by: master.txt, etymology.txt, misconception.txt, cause_effect.txt,
# rewrite-mobile (inline), seed-verifier.txt, seed-proposer (inline).
# Keep this file flat and lightweight — it's injected verbatim where needed.

## Why this file exists
Every modern LLM converges on the same trivia default-repertoire stems when prompted with
generic stems. Run 8 (2026-04-29) demonstrated all 4 frontier providers
defaulted to "mortgage", "panic", "salary", "sandwich", "quarantine" within
their first etymology batches. Pool dedup catches the symptom but burns the
generation + quality + verify spend.

This file collects the ban list once. Whenever a prompt needs to reject AI
training-data default repertoireicals, it should reference this file rather than maintain
its own list.

## BANNED STEMS (cross-archetype — universal default-repertoire)
These question stems are saturated across every provider in our rotation.
NEVER produce a question matching any of these stems, in any archetype:

### Cause/effect default-repertoire stems
- "Why does popcorn pop?" / "Why does microwave popcorn pop?"
- "Why is the sky blue?" / "Why are sunsets red?" / "Why is the ocean blue?"
- "Why do onions make you cry?"
- "Why does brain freeze happen?"
- "Why do we yawn when someone yawns?"
- "Why is Venus hotter than Mercury?"
- "Why do stars twinkle?" / "Why do planets shine steady?"
- "Why does ice float?"
- "Why do leaves change color in autumn?"
- "Why does the moon look bigger near the horizon?"
- "Why do flamingos stand on one leg?"   (saturated 2026-04)
- "Why does inhaling helium make voices high?"
- "What causes the smell after rain (petrichor)?"
- "Why do pruney fingers happen in water?"

### Etymology default-repertoire stems
- "salary" (Roman salt pay)
- "mortgage" (Old French "death pledge")
- "panic" (Greek god Pan)
- "sandwich" (Earl of Sandwich)
- "quarantine" (40 days, Venetian plague)
- "OK" (oll korrect / Old Kinderhook — itself disputed)
- "rule of thumb" (wife-beating story — itself disputed)
- "the whole nine yards" (itself disputed origin)
- "mind your Ps and Qs"
- "checkmate" (Persian shah-mat)
- "boycott" (Captain Boycott)

### Misconception default-repertoire stems
- 10% of brain (the "we only use 10%" myth)
- Einstein failed math in school
- We swallow 8 spiders a year while sleeping
- Goldfish have a 3-second memory
- Lemmings commit mass suicide
- Vikings wore horned helmets
- Roman vomitoriums were rooms for vomiting
- Medieval people thought the Earth was flat
- Napoleon was unusually short
- Bulls are angered by red
- Ostriches bury their heads in sand
- Lightning never strikes the same place twice
- We lose most body heat through our heads

### Estimation Fermi default-repertoire stems
- "How many heartbeats in a human lifetime?"
- "How many grains of sand on a typical beach?"
- "What % of photos ever taken were taken in the last 10 years?"
- "How many cells in the human body?"
- "How many breaths in a lifetime?"

### Comparison default-repertoire stems
- pyramids vs Stonehenge vs mammoths vs written language ("which is older")
- Mid-Ocean Ridge vs Andes vs Himalayas (longest mountain range)
- Mt Everest base-to-summit vs Mauna Kea base-to-summit
- Atacama vs Sahara (driest place)

### Lateral_connection default-repertoire stems
- QWERTY keyboards × railway gauges (path-dependence)
- Aspirin × willow bark
- Honeybees × Roman aqueducts (hexagonal cells)

### Vocab_context default-repertoire stems
- "sophistical" / "unctuous" / "baroque" (well-trodden SAT-vocab)

## ALTERNATIVES (use these if you need a less-saturated example)

### Etymology — fresh targets
- "jeans" (from Genoa)
- "denim" (from Nîmes)
- "tariff" (from Tarifa, Spain)
- "vaccine" (from Latin vacca, cow)
- "veto" (Latin "I forbid")
- "honeymoon" (mead month)
- "berserk" (Old Norse bear-shirt warriors)
- "robot" (Czech robota, forced labor)
- "tantalize" (Tantalus myth)
- "jumbo" (the elephant)
- "disaster" (Italian dis-astro, ill-starred)
- "lunatic" (luna, moon)
- "tabloid" (originally a brand of medicine compressed into tablets)
- "tycoon" (Japanese taikun)
- "denim" (de Nîmes)
- "barbecue" (Taino barabicu)
- "ketchup" (Hokkien kê-chiap, fish sauce)

### Misconception — fresh myths
- Bats are not blind (the "blind as a bat" myth)
- Hair and nails do not grow after death
- Cracking knuckles does not cause arthritis
- The Great Wall of China is not visible from space with the naked eye
- Carrots do not significantly improve night vision (WWII propaganda origin)
- Mount Everest is not the closest point to space (Chimborazo is, due to equatorial bulge)
- Goldfish do not need to be kept in pairs to avoid loneliness
- Glass is not a slow-flowing liquid at room temperature
- The Coriolis force does not determine which way toilets flush

## Usage protocol for prompts that reference this file
When a prompt cites default-repertoire.txt, the model is expected to:
1. Read the BANNED STEMS section as a hard reject list
2. If a draft naturally lands on one of these stems, REGENERATE entirely
3. Do not produce variations that retain the default-repertoire answer (e.g., a
   misconception question whose correct-answer text is "actually we use 100% of
   our brain" still inherits the 10%-brain default repertoire — REJECT)
4. When stuck, draw from the ALTERNATIVES list as a starting point