Ruling — Hanabi

← Hanabi

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Hanabibg-98778-en-1e

Setup

1. Place 8 blue clock tokens face up on the table.[1]

2. Stack 4 black Fuse tokens nearby with the longest fuse on top and the explosion on the bottom.[1]

3. Shuffle the 50 cards to make a deck and put them face down.[1]

4. Deal a hand of 5 cards to each player if there are 2 or 3 players, or 4 cards if there are 4 or 5 players.[1]

5. Players must pick up their cards so that they only see the backs and other players can see the fronts.[2]

Gameplay

1. The player with the most colorful clothing begins the game, and players take turns in a clockwise direction.[2]

2. On a turn, a player must complete one, and only one, of the following three actions:

* Give one piece of information: The player takes a blue token from the table and places it in the lid of the box.[2] They may then tell one teammate information about a specific color or a specific value, provided they clearly point to the cards.[2] The player must give complete information regarding the chosen color or value.[2] This action cannot be performed if there are no blue tokens left on the table.[2]

* Discard a card: The player announces they are discarding, places a card from their hand face up in the discard pile, and takes a new card from the deck without looking at it.[2] This action cannot be performed if all the blue tokens are on the table.[2]

* Play a card: The player takes a card from their hand and places it on the table.[3]

* The card can begin, add to, or complete a firework (cards must be placed in rising order: 1, 2, 3, 4, and finally 5, with only one card of each value per firework).[3]

* Alternatively, if the card does not begin, add to, or complete a firework, the player discards the card and removes the top black fuse token from the stack, placing it in the lid of the box.[3]

* After playing, the player takes a new card from the deck and adds it to their hand without looking at it.[3]

* If a player completes a firework by playing a card with a value of 5, they move a blue token from the lid back to the table.[3] This bonus is lost if all blue tokens are already on the table.[3]

Ending the Game

The game ends in one of three ways:

1. The game ends immediately and is lost if the third black fuse token is added to the lid of the box.[3]

2. The game ends immediately in a stunning victory if the players complete all 5 fireworks before the cards run to the end of the deck.[3]

3. The game ends if a player takes the last card from the pile; in this case, each player plays one more time (including the player who picked up the last card), but players cannot pick up new cards during this last round.[3]

Scoring

1. To calculate the score, players add up the largest value card for each of the 6 fireworks.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Hanabi — Rulebook · p.1 · Summary · Getting Feady

[2] RULEBOOK Hanabi — Rulebook · p.2 · Getting Feady · 'The Game · 1. GIVING A PIECE OF INFORMATION · 2. DISCARDING A CARD

[3] RULEBOOK Hanabi — Rulebook · p.2 · 3. PLAYING A CARD · How the fireworks are built: · BONUS for completing a firework · Eud of the game · SCORE

Question closed. Friendships intact.

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 86 ms · ask 4332 ms · total 7758 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 3338 ms · generation 4420 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 1, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "A player who is given information can rearrange his hand in order to put the cards concerned in an order which is easier for him to remember (on the left, on the right, further up or down). The players can look at the cards in the discarded pile at any time. If a player discards a card that he has n", "headingPath": "STRATEGIC ADVICE · COMMUNICATING WHILE PLAYING HANABI", "sharpsignalDocId": 194}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.048172, "snippet": "CRUCIAL! : The players MUST NOT look at the cards which are dealt to them! They must pick them up so that the other players can see the fronts of the cards ( colored with numbers) and they only see the backs ( black and white). They are not allowed to look at the fronts of the cards that they hold d", "headingPath": "Getting Feady · 'The Game · 1. GIVING A PIECE OF INFORMATION · 2. DISCARDING A CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 194}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "The player takes a card from his hand and plays it to the table. Two options are possible: A. The card either begins, adds to, or completes a firework and it is then added to the appropriate color firework. or The card doesn't begin, add to or complete any firework. Discard the card then remove the ", "headingPath": "3. PLAYING A CARD · How the fireworks are built: · BONUS for completing a firework · Eud of the game · SCORE", "sharpsignalDocId": 194}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "Artistic impression is determined by the Artisan League Of Fireworks Technicians reference scale: <=5 horrible, booed by the crowd... 6-10 mediocre, just a hint of scattered applause... 11-15 honorable attempt, but quickly forgotten... 16-20 excellent, crowd pleasing. 21-24 amazing, they will be tal", "headingPath": "POINTS OVERALL IMPRESSION · VARIANT 1 · VARIANT 2 · VARIANT 3 · EXAMPLE: · VARIANT 4", "sharpsignalDocId": 194}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "Hanabi is a cooperative game, i.e. a game where the players do not play against each other but work together towards a common goal. In this case they are absent minded firework manufacturers who accidentally mixed up powders, fuses and rockets from a firework display. The show is about to start and ", "headingPath": "Summary · Getting Feady", "sharpsignalDocId": 194}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Summary · Getting Feady", "sharpsignalDocId": 194}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Getting Feady · 'The Game · 1. GIVING A PIECE OF INFORMATION · 2. DISCARDING A CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 194}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. PLAYING A CARD · How the fireworks are built: · BONUS for completing a firework · Eud of the game · SCORE", "sharpsignalDocId": 194}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 194 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 194 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)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.91216 of 2220 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 27, 2026 02:22 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

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 rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Hanabi — Rulebook (corpus doc 194)	STRATEGIC ADVICE · COMMUNICATING WHILE PLAYING HANABI	p.1	0.048387 (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
#2	RULEBOOK Hanabi — Rulebook (corpus doc 194)	Getting Feady · 'The Game · 1. GIVING A PIECE OF INFORMATION · 2. DISCARDING A CARD	p.2	0.048172 (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 Hanabi — Rulebook (corpus doc 194)	3. PLAYING A CARD · How the fireworks are built: · BONUS for completing a firework · Eud of the game · SCORE	p.2	0.048139 (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 Hanabi — Rulebook (corpus doc 194)	POINTS OVERALL IMPRESSION · VARIANT 1 · VARIANT 2 · VARIANT 3 · EXAMPLE: · VARIANT 4	p.1	0.046875 (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 Hanabi — Rulebook (corpus doc 194)	Summary · Getting Feady	p.1	0.046642 (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

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 5 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Hanabi — Rulebook (corpus doc 194)	3. PLAYING A CARD · How the fireworks are built: · BONUS for completing a firework · Eud of the game · SCORE	p.2	#3	0.048139 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Hanabi — Rulebook (corpus doc 194)	Summary · Getting Feady	p.1	#5	0.046642 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Hanabi — Rulebook (corpus doc 194)	POINTS OVERALL IMPRESSION · VARIANT 1 · VARIANT 2 · VARIANT 3 · EXAMPLE: · VARIANT 4	p.1	#4	0.046875 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Hanabi — Rulebook (corpus doc 194)	Getting Feady · 'The Game · 1. GIVING A PIECE OF INFORMATION · 2. DISCARDING A CARD	p.2	#2	0.048172 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Hanabi — Rulebook (corpus doc 194)	STRATEGIC ADVICE · COMMUNICATING WHILE PLAYING HANABI	p.1	#1	0.048387 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Hanabi — Rulebook (corpus doc 194)	Summary · Getting Feady	p.1	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Hanabi — Rulebook (corpus doc 194)	Getting Feady · 'The Game · 1. GIVING A PIECE OF INFORMATION · 2. DISCARDING A CARD	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Hanabi — Rulebook (corpus doc 194)	3. PLAYING A CARD · How the fireworks are built: · BONUS for completing a firework · Eud of the game · SCORE	p.2	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 86 ms · first delta 947 ms · total 7758 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 3338 ms · retrieval 86 ms · ask 4332 ms · gateway work 4420 ms · total 7758 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2365
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 696
tok/sec: 203.7 tok/sec — 696 output tokens in 3.417 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 4s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 3s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
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.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 112), 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.