Ruling — Take Time

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Take Timebg-440540-en-1e

Playing a test consists of three phases:

1. Discussion Phase

* Players begin by reviewing the rules for the current clock and its segments, using the Rules sheet from the Chapter sleeve.[1]

* Players discover the nature of the test and discuss strategy without looking at their cards.[2]

* During this phase, players may freely discuss strategy, but they may not use or devise codes or signals to communicate things unrelated to game actions.[3]

* Players place cards facedown next to the segments of the clock to attempt to satisfy general and special rules.[2]

* Once discussions are finished, players pick up their cards and look at them; after this, nothing else may be said.[2]

* If a player picks up their cards before others have finished discussing, they may no longer participate in the discussion.[2]

* In a 2-player game, each player has two sets of cards (one of 4 cards and one of 2 cards); at the end of this phase, they only pick up the set of 4 cards, leaving the 2-card set facedown without looking at them.[2][3]

2. Placement Phase

* Any player can begin this phase without consultation with other players.[4]

* The first player places one card from their hand facedown next to any of the 6 segments.[4]

* The next player to the left takes their turn by selecting one card and placing it next to a segment of their choice (which may be a segment that already has cards).[4]

* The process continues clockwise around the table until all players have placed all of their cards.[4]

* In a 2-player game, after both players have placed 2 cards from their hand, they take their remaining 2 cards and add them to their hand.[4]

* Communication is not allowed during this phase; players must coordinate through the cards they play.[4]

* By default, cards are placed facedown, but players may collectively place as many faceup cards as there are symbols on the Reminder token.[4]

* If multiple cards are placed next to the same segment, they should be overlapped slightly so the number and colors of cards are distinguishable.[4]

* Players may check or confirm known information, such as the value of a card they placed, but they may not look at facedown cards placed by other players.[4]

3. Resolution Phase

* Starting with the segment indicated by the Clock Hand and proceeding clockwise, players reveal each facedown card without altering the order.[5]

* To pass the test, players must ensure:

* At least 1 card has been placed next to each of the 6 segments.[5]

* The sum of the card values in each segment is in ascending numerical order (or remains the same) as they proceed clockwise from the Hand.[5][1]

* The sum of the card values in each segment does not exceed 24 (though this limit may not apply to the first 3 clocks of Chapter 1).[5][1]

* All special rules for the clock and its segments are followed.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook · p.3

[2] RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook · p.3 · Playing a test consists of 3 Phases: · PLACEMENT · PLAYING A TEST

[3] RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook · p.3

[4] RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook · p.4 · PLAYING A TEST · IMPORTANT · FOR EXAMPLE:

[5] RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook · p.5 · FOR EXAMPLE: · TO PASS THE TEST · IF YOU PASS THE TEST

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 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 95 ms · ask 4697 ms · total 4795 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4795 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "The game's 40 tests are divided into 10 chapters, each containing 4 tests, which are represented by clocks. Each time you play, you can attempt to complete any number of these tests in series, for as long or short a play session as you desire. The first time you play, you should start with clock 1 f", "headingPath": "GAME OVERVIEW · For your first game: · For subsequent games: · IMPORTANT", "sharpsignalDocId": 535}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "6 2 PLACEMENT PHASE Communication between players is not allowed during this Phase. You must understand one another and coordinate your efforts solely through the cards you play. Any player can begin this Phase. This is done without any consultation with the other players. They do so by placing 1 ca", "headingPath": "PLAYING A TEST · IMPORTANT · FOR EXAMPLE:", "sharpsignalDocId": 535}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "1 DISCUSSION Players discover the nature of the test and discuss their strategy without looking at their cards. Players place cards facedown next to the segments of the clock in an effort to satisfy the general rules for the game, as well as any special rules that apply to the current clock. RESOLUT", "headingPath": "Playing a test consists of 3 Phases: · PLACEMENT · PLAYING A TEST", "sharpsignalDocId": 535}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "“We want to aim for a total of around 14 for this segment.” “If someone has a 12 in their hand, they should play first.” “If I place my first card next to this segment, nobody else should place anything there, as I can manage it on my own.” “If I place my card at an angle, that means it’s an 11.” “I", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 535}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046432, "snippet": "If you wish to replay the full game from the beginning, reset the contents as follows: 1 Place the Rebirth sleeve at the bottom of the box, ensuring that all its associated pieces are stored inside it. 2 Return all clocks and Rules sheets to their original sleeves. 3 Sort the Chapter sleeves and pla", "headingPath": "RESETTING THE BOX · HINTS AND TIPS", "sharpsignalDocId": 535}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.046394, "snippet": "Join forces to tackle the challenges posed by the clocks found throughout different universes, from 'Awakening' to 'Rebirth'. Play and replay the levels at your own pace while discovering a game experience filled with ever-evolving challenges and limitless possibilities. Take Time is a cooperative g", "headingPath": "Time itself is testing you!", "sharpsignalDocId": 535}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.044337, "snippet": "3 RESOLUTION PHASE Starting with the segment with the Clock Hand and proceeding clockwise, reveal each facedown card, being careful not to alter the order of the cards. The value of a segment is equal to the sum of the values on the cards placed next to it. 1 At least 1 card must have been placed ne", "headingPath": "FOR EXAMPLE: · TO PASS THE TEST · IF YOU PASS THE TEST", "sharpsignalDocId": 535}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Segment Rule Clock Number In a 2-player game, each player has two sets of cards: one containing 4 cards, and the other containing 2 cards. At the end of the Discussion Phase, they only pick up their set of 4 cards, leaving the 2-card set facedown without looking at them. Players then freely discuss ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 535}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 535}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing a test consists of 3 Phases: · PLACEMENT · PLAYING A TEST", "sharpsignalDocId": 535}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 535}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYING A TEST · IMPORTANT · FOR EXAMPLE:", "sharpsignalDocId": 535}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "FOR EXAMPLE: · TO PASS THE TEST · IF YOU PASS THE TEST", "sharpsignalDocId": 535}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 535 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 535 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 0.92229 of 2342 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 27, 2026 19:52 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 Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)	GAME OVERVIEW · For your first game: · For subsequent games: · IMPORTANT	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
#2	RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)	PLAYING A TEST · IMPORTANT · FOR EXAMPLE:	p.4	0.048131 (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 Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)	Playing a test consists of 3 Phases: · PLACEMENT · PLAYING A TEST	p.3	0.047938 (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 Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)		p.3	0.046635 (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 Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)	RESETTING THE BOX · HINTS AND TIPS	p.6	0.046432 (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 Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)	Time itself is testing you!	p.1	0.046394 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)	FOR EXAMPLE: · TO PASS THE TEST · IF YOU PASS THE TEST	p.5	0.044337 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)		p.3	0.029851 (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 11 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 Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)	Playing a test consists of 3 Phases: · PLACEMENT · PLAYING A TEST	p.3	#3	0.047938 (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 Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)	GAME OVERVIEW · For your first game: · For subsequent games: · IMPORTANT	p.2	#1	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
#3	RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)	Time itself is testing you!	p.1	#6	0.046394 (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 Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)	RESETTING THE BOX · HINTS AND TIPS	p.6	#5	0.046432 (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 Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)	FOR EXAMPLE: · TO PASS THE TEST · IF YOU PASS THE TEST	p.5	#7	0.044337 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)		p.3	#8	0.029851 (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 + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)	PLAYING A TEST · IMPORTANT · FOR EXAMPLE:	p.4	#2	0.048131 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)		p.3	#4	0.046635 (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 Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)	Playing a test consists of 3 Phases: · PLACEMENT · PLAYING A TEST	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)	PLAYING A TEST · IMPORTANT · FOR EXAMPLE:	p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Take Time — Rulebook (corpus doc 535)	FOR EXAMPLE: · TO PASS THE TEST · IF YOU PASS THE TEST	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 95 ms · first delta 1308 ms · total 4795 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 95 ms · ask 4697 ms · gateway work 4795 ms · total 4795 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3837
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 690
tok/sec: 201.0 tok/sec — 690 output tokens in 3.433 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 47s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 6s 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 467), 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.