RuleSage cited table rulings
← Scrabble

You asked

How do I set up the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Scrabblebg-320-en-1e

1. Open the gameboard in the middle of the play area [1]. 2. Put all letter tiles in the bag [1]. 3. Decide who will be the scorekeeper, and have that person grab a pen and paper [1]. 4. Place a tile rack in front of you [1]. 5. Everyone draws one tile to determine order; the player with the letter closest to A goes first (a blank tile beats any letter) [1]. 6. Place all tiles back in the bag [1]. 7. In playing order, take seven tiles each from the bag and put them on your rack, ensuring no one else can see them [1]. 8. Have a dictionary ready for any word challenges [1].

[1] RULEBOOK Scrabble — Rulebook · p.1 · SET IT UP · PLAY · On Your Turn
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile
live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings
search 255 ms · ask 3486 ms · total 1833688 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 1829940 ms · generation 3748 ms
retrieval refs (raw)
[{"page": 1, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "F42040000_SCRABBLE_CLASSIC_I.indd 1-4 Open the gameboard in the middle of the play area and put all letter tiles in the bag. Decide who will be the scorekeeper. Scorekeeper, grab a pen and paper. Place a tile rack in front of you. Now everyone draws one tile. The player with the letter closest to A ", "headingPath": "SET IT UP · PLAY · On Your Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 144}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Any letter tile(s) played must form at least one new word. After the first word on the board is formed, a single tile may be played on any turn. Any new word must connect with at least one tile already on the gameboard. All touching letter tiles must form complete words. Your score each turn is the ", "headingPath": "Remember: · PLACING TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 144}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "If all tiles have been drawn from the bag and one player empties their rack. If all players pass twice in turn. When the game ends, each player's score is reduced by the sum of their unplayed letter tiles. If a player has used all of their tiles, the sum of the other players' unplayed tiles is added", "headingPath": "There are two ways the game can end: · Is there a tie? · You can't make a word? · No one can make a word? · You took too many tiles?", "sharpsignalDocId": 144}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "The game is over when one player reaches a decided score, no matter how many tiles are left. This variant accommodates mixed level groups, as the score needed to win depends on the level of the player: | | 2 Players | 3 Players | 4 Players | | Beginner | 70 | 60 | 50 | | Intermediate | 120 | 100 | 9", "headingPath": "Finish Line SCRABBLE · ON-THE-GO FUN", "sharpsignalDocId": 144}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "· A covered premium square is no longer premium! Premium square bonus points are only counted on the turn letters are first placed on them. · When you form more than one word on a turn, count every letter (with any premium value) for each word you form. That means if you place a letter on a premium ", "headingPath": "Cover a premium square to boost your score! · Bingo for 50 points! · WORDS · Which words are NOT allowed? · Don't think that's a word? Any player may challenge another before the next player starts their turn.", "sharpsignalDocId": 144}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Learn the two- and three-letter words. They are the building blocks of expert play and can really boost your score. Shuffle the tiles on your rack. Look for common ways that letters go together. Some of these are BR, CH, CL, DLE, ED, ENT, EST, FUL, GHT, ING, NK, KLE, MIS, ISM, IUM, MB, MP, ND, NT, P", "headingPath": "EXPERT TIPS · Exchange Blanks", "sharpsignalDocId": 144}]
citations (raw)
[{"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SET IT UP · PLAY · On Your Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 144}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 144 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 144 boosted
answered-before recall
this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
debug row retained until
Nov 6, 2026 14:40

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Scrabble — Rulebook (corpus doc 144) SET IT UP · PLAY · On Your Turn p.1 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Scrabble — Rulebook (corpus doc 144) Remember: · PLACING TILES p.1 0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#3 RULEBOOK Scrabble — Rulebook (corpus doc 144) There are two ways the game can end: · Is there a tie? · You can't make a word? · No one can make a word? · You took too many tiles? p.2 0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#4 RULEBOOK Scrabble — Rulebook (corpus doc 144) Finish Line SCRABBLE · ON-THE-GO FUN p.2 0.03125 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#5 RULEBOOK Scrabble — Rulebook (corpus doc 144) Cover a premium square to boost your score! · Bingo for 50 points! · WORDS · Which words are NOT allowed? · Don't think that's a word? Any player may challenge another before the next player starts their turn. p.2 0.030769 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#6 RULEBOOK Scrabble — Rulebook (corpus doc 144) EXPERT TIPS · Exchange Blanks p.2 0.030303 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Scrabble — Rulebook (corpus doc 144) SET IT UP · PLAY · On Your Turn p.1 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 255 ms · first delta 2528 ms · total 1833688 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown
queued 1829940 ms · retrieval 255 ms · ask 3486 ms · gateway work 3748 ms · total 1833688 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
2712
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
157
tok/sec
147.8 tok/sec — 157 output tokens in 1.062 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 46s ago)
stream path
streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog
first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture
both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched
SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question)
set up

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 66), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.