7 · Mix a bowl with a saddle

A two-microphone table: a bowl from an on-line zero, plus an adjustable amount of saddle from a mirror pair.

Try this. Slide the saddle in. The up-curving directions never exceed the number of contributions that curled up: one from the bowl, at most one from the saddle. That cap is the see-saw law.

With no saddle the table has one up-direction and one flat one. However hard the saddle is pushed, the up-count never passes two, and a downward direction appears the moment the saddle wins: counting directions counts contributions.