With increasingly dense wireless traffic in 5G and 6G networks, the incidence of message faults due to interference is increasing, leading to wasted time and energy on multiple re-transmissions. Disclosed are procedures for assembling a fault-free copy of a message from two corrupted copies. First, measure the modulation quality of each message element. A faulted message element usually has poor modulation quality. Then, select the best message elements from each of the two corrupted copies, and test the merged version against an embedded error-detection code. If the merged copy still fails the test, select each of the message elements that are different in the two faulted copies since they are all suspicious, and test each version with the error-detection code. By recovering a message despite reception errors, another transmission is avoided, saving time and energy, and avoiding contributing yet further to the background noise. Many additional aspects are disclosed.