diff --git a/Linchpin/Sniffs/Performance/SlowOrderBySniff.php b/Linchpin/Sniffs/Performance/SlowOrderBySniff.php
index 22dc66c..3923191 100644
--- a/Linchpin/Sniffs/Performance/SlowOrderBySniff.php
+++ b/Linchpin/Sniffs/Performance/SlowOrderBySniff.php
@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@
 
 namespace Linchpin\Sniffs\Performance;
 
+use PHPCSUtils\Utils\TextStrings;
 use WordPressCS\WordPress\AbstractArrayAssignmentRestrictionsSniff;
 
 /**
@@ -14,16 +15,14 @@
  */
 class SlowOrderBySniff extends AbstractArrayAssignmentRestrictionsSniff
 {
-    /**
-     * Current stack pointer.
-     *
-     * @var int
-     */
-    protected $stackPtr;
-
     /**
      * Groups of variables to restrict.
      *
+     * The message uses %2$s rather than %s on purpose. The parent emits with
+     * `array( $key, $value )` as the replacements, so %s resolves to the array key
+     * — always the literal "orderby" — and %2$s is the assigned value, which is the
+     * part worth naming.
+     *
      * @return array
      */
     public function getGroups()
@@ -31,7 +30,7 @@ public function getGroups()
         return [
         'slow_order' => [
         'type'    => 'warning',
-        'message' => 'Ordering query results by %s is not performant.',
+        'message' => 'Ordering query results by %2$s is not performant.',
         'keys'    => [
         'orderby',
         ],
@@ -40,22 +39,31 @@ public function getGroups()
     }
 
     /**
-     * Process a token.
+     * Callback to process each confirmed key, to check value.
      *
-     * Overrides the parent to store the stackPtr for later use.
+     * Returning true lets the parent emit the group message above. This sniff used
+     * to call `$this->addMessage()` here and return false to suppress the built-in
+     * message — the shape WPCS 2 offered on WordPressCS\WordPress\Sniff. WPCS 3
+     * removed that method, so the call resolved to nothing on the class or its
+     * parent and the sniff fatalled the moment it found something to report:
      *
-     * @param int $stackPtr The position of the current token in the stack.
-     */
-    public function process_token( $stackPtr )
-    {
-        $this->stackPtr = $stackPtr;
-        parent::process_token($stackPtr);
-        unset($this->stackPtr);
-    }
-
-    /**
-     * Callback to process each confirmed key, to check value.
-     * This must be extended to add the logic to check assignment value.
+     *   Uncaught Error: Call to undefined method
+     *   Linchpin\Sniffs\Performance\SlowOrderBySniff::addMessage()
+     *
+     * Because it only ever ran on a query that actually ordered by one of these
+     * values, it looked healthy on any codebase that never hit the pattern, and
+     * consuming projects worked around it by excluding the sniff outright.
+     *
+     * Deferring to the parent rather than re-adding a shim also drops the
+     * `$stackPtr` property and the `process_token()` override that existed only to
+     * carry a token pointer to the manual call. The parent already reports against
+     * the key's own token, which is the more accurate position.
+     *
+     * The quotes have to come off first. The parent builds the value from the raw
+     * tokens, so a literal arrives here as `'rand'` — quotes included — and the
+     * comparison against `rand` could never match. Combined with the fatal above,
+     * the sniff had two independent reasons never to work: it matched nothing, and
+     * anything it did match would have crashed.
      *
      * @param  string $key   Array index / key.
      * @param  mixed  $val   Assigned value.
@@ -66,20 +74,11 @@ public function process_token( $stackPtr )
      */
     public function callback( $key, $val, $line, $group )
     {
-        switch ( $val ) {
+        switch ( TextStrings::stripQuotes( (string) $val ) ) {
         case 'rand':
         case 'meta_value':
         case 'meta_value_num':
-            $this->addMessage(
-                'Ordering query results by %s is not performant.',
-                $this->stackPtr,
-                'warning',
-                'slow_order',
-                [ $val ]
-            );
-
-            // Skip built-in message.
-            return false;
+            return true;
 
         default:
             // No match.
diff --git a/Linchpin/ruleset.xml b/Linchpin/ruleset.xml
index 7e8e785..fc99e8d 100644
--- a/Linchpin/ruleset.xml
+++ b/Linchpin/ruleset.xml
@@ -14,8 +14,21 @@
 	<!-- Parallel processing. -->
 	<arg name="parallel" value="25"/>
 
-	<!-- WordPress Core currently supports PHP 8.2+. -->
-	<config name="testVersion" value="8.2-8.4"/>
+	<!--
+		WordPress Core currently supports PHP 8.2+.
+
+		Open-ended on purpose. A closed upper bound goes stale silently: it was
+		8.2-8.4 while linchpin.com had already moved to PHP 8.5, so PHPCompatibility
+		was checking that project against the wrong target and every consumer on a
+		newer PHP had to override this line in its own ruleset to get correct
+		results. "8.2-" means 8.2 and above, so a project moving to a new PHP gets
+		accurate compatibility checking without a release here first.
+
+		A project that wants to pin a single version still can, by setting its own
+		testVersion — that is a deliberate narrowing rather than a workaround for a
+		bound that has fallen behind.
+	-->
+	<config name="testVersion" value="8.2-"/>
 
 	<exclude-pattern>node_modules/*</exclude-pattern>
 	<exclude-pattern>vendor/*</exclude-pattern>