base
Each candidate hashes the word before it with a 64-bit little-endian counter appended: sha256( word ‖ counter ). red opens the ring and is ground for again at its close.
ascii8
One byte per character. A match means the SHA-256 hash prefix spells the word in ASCII hex.
targets
red to blue to pink to grey to black to white to green to brown to yellow to purple to orange, and orange ground back to red — brown's search for yellow rested at yello when the budget ran out.
counters
Winning counter values from 257,154 to 99 trillion, within a 248 budget per search.