The queue, and the circle test

Between the address and the storefront there are two screens, and every visitor passes them, first time or hundredth. Most problems people report about the market are actually the queue, misread as a fault in the address. Knowing what each screen says, before meeting it, takes the worry out of the visit.

Screen one: the access queue

A white page, a spinner, one sentence. It can last ten seconds or several minutes, and the difference is only how busy the market is right now. The queue is real: it meters how many people enter at once, so the storefront does not drown. The one rule is the sentence itself. Refreshing does not move you up, it puts you back at the end. Opening a second tab to "help" opens a second place in line.

Screen two: the robot check

The page is dark, titled "Are you not a Robot?", and shows a painted scene: a person in a boat on a lake, covered in colored circles. The instruction is at the bottom. One of the circles has a visible gap, a cut in its outline, and that one is the answer. It is a single click, not a puzzle with several steps. When the click lands, the page forwards you to the market.

The yellow bar under the picture is a timer. If it empties before you click, the picture changes and you start again with a new scene. A slow connection makes the picture load slowly and eats the timer, which is why a timed-out captcha on a weak line is normal, not a verdict on the address.

How to answer quickly

Look for the gap, not for the faintest or the smallest circle. Overlapping lines create the impression of cuts that are not there; the real one has a clean break where the outline simply stops. If two circles both look broken, the answer is the one whose break you can follow with your finger around to the other side. Click once, and do not click again: the second click has already left the picture.

When the entry stalls

If the queue runs for more than ten minutes without reaching the captcha, the circuit is probably dead as much as the market is busy. Let one more minute pass, then open a second entry address in a new tab; the two run on different routes and usually only one of them is stuck. The list to pick from is always on screen above, and the full reasoning for switching is on the mirrors page. And if the stalls come back again and again across all three addresses, read what the failures actually mean before touching anything.