Constructive route: surger G so every level cycle is even (two-vertex leaf gadget
on terminal triangles -> 4-wheel, no defect; diamond on odd internal seams), take
the canonical even colouring of M(G') (no 4CT used), Kempe-remove the planted
degree-4/3 vertices to reach a proper 3-colouring of M(G).
Pipeline runs end to end on synthetic ring triangulations: surgery, canonical
colouring, and gadget removal all work; the program lands on the CYCLE LAYER
(39/60 ok, rest fail:diamond-switch). Diagnostic: a descendable colouring always
EXISTS (M(G) is 3-colourable), so failures are Kempe-reachability from the
canonical even colouring, not non-existence -- the entire difficulty is localised
there. Greedy per-diamond switching is insufficient because diamonds share vertical
{1,3}-Kempe cycles; the principled solve is joint (bipartiteness of the diamond /
side-cycle constraint graph), which is the identified next step. Includes the leaf
gadget figure and a findings note.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
didericis
c6e2c3e1a5