Charged, then enqueued.

A move is charged before it is queued, not after it is scored. The reference implementation debits the player’s wallet on the room’s currency path — keys in a paid room, clips in a free one — inside a transaction, and only on a committed charge does it append the guess as a job to the lane. If the charge fails, no job is enqueued and the move did not happen.

This is an all-pay rule: a player pays for every attempt regardless of whether it scores well, or at all. The cost is sunk at submission, which is what funds the bank in a paid room and what discourages a flood of throwaway guesses. The shape is that of an all-pay auction, where every bid is paid and only the standings decide the prize.

The job carries only the branded ids and the guess — the player, the game, the six codes — not a score and not the secret. The surface answers the player at once that the guess was accepted, while the scoring happens behind the boundary. Accepting work and doing work are split, so a burst of guesses is absorbed by the lane rather than blocking the player’s request.