base
Each candidate hashes the word before it with a 64-bit little-endian counter appended: sha256( word ‖ counter ). night 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
night to dawn to morn to noon to dusk to eve, and eve ground back to night — the day as a ring, each hour found from the last.
counters
Winning counter values from 35 million to 897 billion, within a 248 budget per search.