RE: You make the call!
Sylvan,
once you respond in a thread to another poster, all responses after that are directed to that same person no matter whose message you click respond on next time.
BTW, you did a great job of pointing out what we all were thinking. I simplified my response by just pointing out that there was too much "wiggle room" built into DD's question but you took the time to spell that out.
no apologies necessary!