Junction Hook Errors in the Color Code

arXiv:2610.33347v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Color-dependent syndrome extraction schedules have been proposed to mitigate hook errors in the triangular color code. Recent work by Kishony and Fowler (arXiv:2603.28852) identifies distance-reducing hook errors by the type of anyon for which they provide a shortcut and chooses the CNOT ordering for stabilizers of each color to avoid these errors. We identify an additional class of distance-reducing hooks, which we call junction hook errors, that is not captured by this classification. The two data qubits of a junction hook error terminate anyon strings of two different colors at the point where the three colored strings of a logical operator meet, which we call the junction.