`.claims` — layout options

Nineteen ways to draw the thirteen injury claims. Round 1 (C1–C7·b) works the grid, with the four-column version drawn three times because of what four does to thirteen. Round 2 (C8–C13) changes the family — a wall with no gutters, an index with one preview, a stagger, a strip, a circle, and home_v1's own checkerboard. Round 3 (C14–C17) leaves the tile behind altogether: a band, a slice, an editorial row, a poster. H·a–H·c at the end are not layouts: they are the hover question, drawn at rest and hovered. Every option carries the real thirteen, their real URLs, and the photograph the live claim page itself uses for each — all executed out of gen_injuries_index.py, so nothing here can drift from injuries-index.html.

Thirteen is the constraint, and nothing styles its way out. Thirteen is prime, so every plain grid leaves a ragged last row: four across leaves ONE tile beside three empty cells, five leaves a row of three, six leaves a lone tile on row three. A row of three reads as a row; one tile beside three holes reads as a mistake — which is why the four-column grid is drawn three times below rather than once.

Two options fit exactly, and both do it the same way: by changing the count, not the tile. C3 — a 4-column grid is 16 cells over four rows, a 2×2 lead takes four, and the remaining twelve hold exactly the other twelve claims. C7·a — one claim takes the whole top row, and 1 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 13. Both work only if one claim genuinely leads, and which one is the firm's call, not a layout's. C7·b is the third answer: leave the count alone and centre the short row — one property, all thirteen the same size, and the orphan is still an orphan, just a polite one.

option	height at 1280	tile	last row
C1 — grid, caption under	__H1__	230×173	three of five
C2 — caption on the image	__H2__	230×230	three of five
C6 — hexagon tiles	__H6__	230×266	three of five
C5 — a row per group	__H5__	193 / 302 / 411	each row is full
C3 — mosaic, one leading	__H3__	296×220, lead 624×472	no hole at all
four columns — 1280 = 4 × 296 + 3 × 32
C7 — four across, as it falls	__H7__	296×222	one beside three holes
C7·b — last row centred	__H7b__	296×222	one, centred
C7·a — first claim across the top	__H7a__	296×222, band 1280×300	no hole at all
C4 — rows with thumbnails	__H4__	96×72	one column, no ragged row

C7 and C7·b are the same height to the pixel (1096) — centring the short row costs nothing but does not save anything either. Measured in headless Chrome at 1440, not estimated — and the first draft of this table was wrong in two places, which is why it is measured: C2 looked like the short one because it has no caption band, and C3 looked like the tall one because its lead tile is the biggest thing on the sheet. Neither is true.

Two things are settled and identical in all six, so the comparison is about layout. Tone: eleven of the thirteen photographs are already black and white on the live site — measured as mean per-pixel chroma, not read off filenames like blackandwhitemiata — so all thirteen are filtered to match rather than the cyclist and the pedestrian reading as mistakes. Colour: names brown 10.87:1, hover #A94A29 5.68:1. Brand orange is 3.03:1 and carries no word anywhere here; it is a rule under a hovered tile and nothing else.

The two portrait photographs are anchored, not centred. The motorcycle source is a rider's-eye view with the machine in the lower half — centred, the tile showed an empty road and no motorcycle — and the dog's open jaw centres slightly high. Every option inherits both anchors, so no option is being judged on a crop the others do not have.

Page weight, the same in five of six. The tiles display at 230px and the media library's nearest derivative is 768px — 3.3× what is needed, 2,427 KB for thirteen images. The 300px set is 379 KB but soft on a retina screen, and the originals are 6,942 KB (Pedestrian's alone is 5472×3648 and 3.78 MB). The size that is actually right, ~461px, does not exist: registering a 460px image size in WordPress is the fix, and it is a setting rather than a layout decision. C4 is the exception — at 96×72 the 300px set is already more than enough, so that option could ship at a tenth of the weight today.

%s

.claims — layout options

`.claims` — layout options