Ruling — Wavelength

← Wavelength

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Wavelengthbg-262543-en-1e

Setup

1. Place the device into the slot in the middle of the box's tray.[1]

2. Insert the three tokens—the 'heads' and guessing piece—into their various slots.[1]

3. Divide into two teams of roughly the same size.[1]

4. Decide which players will be the Psychics for the first round.[1]

5. The first team starts at 0 points and the second team starts at 1 point.[1]

The Psychic Phase

1. Close the screen by rotating it using the plastic handle until it is entirely closed and clicks into place.[2]

2. Draw one wavelength card from the deck and choose a side to use.[2]

3. Place the card in the slot in front of the device with the chosen side facing forward and read the text aloud to both teams.[2]

4. Randomize the target location by turning the wheel using your fingers along the wavy edges while the screen is closed.[2]

5. Open the screen completely using the plastic handle to look at where the target is located.[3] (Note: If the center 4-point wedge is not visible, close the screen and spin again [3]).

6. Give a clue that is conceptually where the target is located on the spectrum between the two concepts on the card.[3] Clues should convey a single thought, be on topic, use no synonyms, no numbers, no qualifiers, and be 5 words or less.[4]

7. Close the screen using the plastic handle.[3][4]

The Team Phase

1. The Psychic's team discusses the clue and turns the red dial as close to the center of the colored target as they can.[5][4]

The Left/Right Phase

1. The other team guesses if the target is to the left or right.[6]

Scoring and Progression

1. The Psychic reveals the target and points are given.[6]

2. The other team begins their round, unless the catch-up rule is triggered (if the Psychic's team scores 4 points and is still losing, they immediately take another turn with a different Psychic).[6]

3. Play continues with teams taking turns as the Psychic.[6]

4. Once a team reaches 10 points, the game ends and the team with the highest score wins.[6]

5. In the event of a tie, teams take a final sudden death turn; the team that scores the most points that round wins.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook · p.9 · GAME SUMMARY · SETUP NOTES

[2] RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook · p.10 · PSYCHIC PHASE

[3] RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook · p.11 · PSYCHIC PHASE · Now the Psychic stops communicating ENTIRELY!

[4] RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook · p.24 · CLUE GIVING RULES · CLUE GIVING SUGGESTIONS · ROUND GUIDE

[5] RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook · p.2 · Your team's goal

[6] RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook · p.15 · HOW THE GAME PROGRESSES · AN IMPORTANT CATCH UP RULE · WINNING

Answer in hand — your move.

🔧 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 103 ms · ask 4014 ms · total 4119 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4119 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 9, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Wavelength is a social guessing game where two teams compete to read each other's minds. Teams take turns rotating a dial to where they think a target is located along a spectrum that's hidden behind a screen. One player from the active team-the Psychic-knows where the target is, but can only give a", "headingPath": "GAME SUMMARY · SETUP NOTES", "sharpsignalDocId": 135}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "In this mode, everyone wins or loses together as a single team. It works really well with 2-5 players, but you can play at any size. The rules are mostly the same, except: T o start, put 7 random wavelength cards in the card slot. When that deck runs out, the game is over. Then use the chart on the ", "headingPath": "COOPERATIVE MODE", "sharpsignalDocId": 135}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "PSYCHIC PHASE : Current team's Psychic gives clue TEAM PHASE : Psychic's team discusses and turns dial LEFT/RIGHT PHASE : Other team guesses left/right SCORING : Psychic reveals target and points are given After Scoring, the other team begins their round UNLESS the catch up rule is triggered , detai", "headingPath": "HOW THE GAME PROGRESSES · AN IMPORTANT CATCH UP RULE · WINNING", "sharpsignalDocId": 135}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.045235, "snippet": "Open the screen : Using the plastic handle, open the screen and look at where the target is located. You should always open the screen COMPLETELY, even if you can see the target with it partially open: otherwise, players watching you will be able to guess the general target location. Very infrequent", "headingPath": "PSYCHIC PHASE · Now the Psychic stops communicating ENTIRELY!", "sharpsignalDocId": 135}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Convey a single thought Don't invent something Be on topic No synonyms No numbers 5 words or less No qualifiers, like 'very,' 'kind of,' or 'after three drinks' Use proper nouns, not 'Someone who…' or 'A place where…' or 'A thing that…' Psychic player prepares and gives a clue: Close the screen Draw", "headingPath": "CLUE GIVING RULES · CLUE GIVING SUGGESTIONS · ROUND GUIDE", "sharpsignalDocId": 135}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Each round begins with the current team's Psychic spinning the wheel to randomize the target's location, drawing a wavelength card, and giving a clue ON THE SPECTRUM between the two concepts on the card. The Psychic should do all of this secretly, so players on both teams can't see where the target ", "headingPath": "PSYCHIC PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 135}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Once both teams have finalized their guesses, it's time for the most exciting part of the game: THE REVEAL. The Psychic opens the screen to reveal the target. Their team scores points if the dial is within the colored target area, as listed on the colored wedges (2-4 points). If the dial is ever on ", "headingPath": "SCORING PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 135}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.029958, "snippet": "If this round's card is 'Sad Song - Happy Song,' can I say 'Happy' by Pharrell even though it has a word from the card in the title? Yes, assuming the clue is still on topic, since you're referencing the name of a thing not the concept. In general, puns nearly always break the 'on topic' rule. For e", "headingPath": "FAQ · Can I use a pun or play on words? · Can I use rhymes, homonyms, and such?", "sharpsignalDocId": 135}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SUMMARY · SETUP NOTES", "sharpsignalDocId": 135}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PSYCHIC PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 135}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PSYCHIC PHASE · Now the Psychic stops communicating ENTIRELY!", "sharpsignalDocId": 135}, {"page": 24, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CLUE GIVING RULES · CLUE GIVING SUGGESTIONS · ROUND GUIDE", "sharpsignalDocId": 135}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Your team's goal", "sharpsignalDocId": 135}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "HOW THE GAME PROGRESSES · AN IMPORTANT CATCH UP RULE · WINNING", "sharpsignalDocId": 135}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 135 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 135 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 0.89604 of 1741 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 28, 2026 05:15 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 Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	GAME SUMMARY · SETUP NOTES	p.9	0.048652 (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 Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	COOPERATIVE MODE	p.22	0.047371 (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 Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	HOW THE GAME PROGRESSES · AN IMPORTANT CATCH UP RULE · WINNING	p.15	0.046898 (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 Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	PSYCHIC PHASE · Now the Psychic stops communicating ENTIRELY!	p.11	0.045235 (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 Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	CLUE GIVING RULES · CLUE GIVING SUGGESTIONS · ROUND GUIDE	p.24	0.032787 (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 Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	PSYCHIC PHASE	p.10	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
#7	RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	SCORING PHASE	p.14	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
#8	RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	FAQ · Can I use a pun or play on words? · Can I use rhymes, homonyms, and such?	p.19	0.029958 (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 20 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 Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	COOPERATIVE MODE	p.22	#2	0.047371 (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 Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	PSYCHIC PHASE · Now the Psychic stops communicating ENTIRELY!	p.11	#4	0.045235 (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 Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	HOW THE GAME PROGRESSES · AN IMPORTANT CATCH UP RULE · WINNING	p.15	#3	0.046898 (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 Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	Your team's goal	p.2	#11	0.014286 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	CLUE GIVING RULES · CLUE GIVING SUGGESTIONS · ROUND GUIDE	p.24	#5	0.032787 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	FAQ · Can I use a pun or play on words? · Can I use rhymes, homonyms, and such?	p.19	#8	0.029958 (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 re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	PSYCHIC PHASE	p.10	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	GAME SUMMARY · SETUP NOTES	p.9	#1	0.048652 (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 Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	GAME SUMMARY · SETUP NOTES	p.9	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	PSYCHIC PHASE	p.10	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	PSYCHIC PHASE · Now the Psychic stops communicating ENTIRELY!	p.11	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	CLUE GIVING RULES · CLUE GIVING SUGGESTIONS · ROUND GUIDE	p.24	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	Your team's goal	p.2	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Wavelength — Rulebook (corpus doc 135)	HOW THE GAME PROGRESSES · AN IMPORTANT CATCH UP RULE · WINNING	p.15	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 103 ms · first delta 1392 ms · total 4119 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 103 ms · ask 4014 ms · gateway work 4119 ms · total 4119 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2233
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 541
tok/sec: 202.0 tok/sec — 541 output tokens in 2.678 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 46s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 5s 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 57), 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.