Verification complete — all nine edited locations hold, no new Comedy blockers. Report written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_18.comedy_doctor_post_positive_verification.md`. Summary:

**Per-location verdicts (all COMEDY-HOLDS):**

1. **Catalog plan** — Round-9 item 2 resolved by full cut (even the repaired "fit in one line" version is gone). Paragraph now ends "...slid it under the table where she wouldn't have to see gray while she ate" (line 7) — optical avoidance, not a comedy attempt.
2. **Mara emoji** — "Mara sent back a turkey and a heart and asked nothing else." (line 13). Item 7's incongruity survives uncaptioned and is stronger for it; funniness 2, character, non-portable.
3. **Nia email** — The rated sentence is gone; the typed-and-deleted ventilation question (line 31) is action dramatization, no blocker. Item 10's motive-irony line is also cut, which is valid.
4. **Pie handoff** — Mara's overexplanation ("Not the foil. The dish under it.", line 75) is funnier and more card-true than the cut "It's a dish I want back."; "Ruth is bringing a ruler" is the already-verified round-9 repair, untouched. Ruth's one-sharp-line cap unaffected.
5. **Fourth/fifth study** — "It was wood at an angle, viewed from the door." (line 89) keeps item 22's deflation in the half round 9 called the material half; losing the quotable "The chair did nothing" moves it *away* from workshopped, not toward it.
6. **Studies row** — "Pinned up, they could become another thing in a window." (line 91) binds to Sonia's crooked flyer and is cryptic without it — fails as quotation, so not workshopped; no blocker.
7. **Monday Tasker** — Cursor/draft action (line 95) is joke-free with a named round-9 reason (solo stretches are grief-shaped; this book's comedy is social).
8. **Nail-hole ending** — "Wet spackle sat white beside the brighter paint." (line 97). Not comedy; also checked no joke was added to sweeten the close.
9. **Attribution** — "Mara smoothed the fold..." (line 67) is clarity-only; the cut quip stays cut, and item 18's "October. It's almost December." deflation at line 81–83 is unaffected.

Grep confirmed zero chapter-wide hits for every ordered-dead string (`required no one`, `part that cost`, `true question`, `competent`, `did nothing`, `Better than I treat`, `has opinions`, `whole plan`, `dish I want back`).

**NEW-COMEDY-BLOCKERS-FROM-POST-POSITIVE-REPAIR: NONE**

**OUT-OF-SCOPE WATCH** (not relitigated, flagged for trackers): Plain Translation excised round-9 item 21 (the lie/avoiding-room irony at the dinner-skip paragraph) — a former funniness-2 item outside my scope; density still clears "lightly comic" at roughly 17 landing items, but no later pass should re-add captioned wit to the solo stretches. Also, the clerical-figure cap round 9 logged at 1/1 is now at 0 (the "ratify" instance was removed) — the motif tracker entry is stale for Ch19.

**OVERALL: CURRENT-COMEDY-HOLDS**
