Ruling — Project L

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Project Lbg-260180-en-1e

For the base game (2-6 players):

1. Shuffle all the White puzzles to form a White puzzle deck and place it face down in the center of the play area.[1]

2. Shuffle all of the Black puzzles and then take a number of them at random based on the number of players.[1]

3. Shuffle the selected Black puzzles together to form a Black puzzle deck and place it face down beside the White puzzle deck, returning any remaining Black puzzles to the box.[1]

4. Reveal the top 4 puzzles from each deck, placing them face up, in rows to the right of each deck.[1]

5. Place all of the colored pieces in a reserve nearby.[1]

For the solo variant:

1. Select 15 random White puzzles and 10 random Black puzzles.[2]

2. Shuffle each set of puzzles separately and place the Black puzzles face down in the centre of the play area, then place the White puzzles on top to create the puzzle deck.[2]

3. Reveal 9 puzzles from the top of the puzzle deck and arrange them into a 3 × 3 grid.[2]

4. Place all of the colored pieces in a reserve.[2]

5. Take four random pieces from the reserve and place one above the 1st and 3rd columns and two above the 2nd column of the puzzle grid.[2]

6. Take one Player mat for yourself and place it in front of you, designating an area for your opponent.[2]

7. Take one level-1 and one level-2 piece and place them in your personal supply.[2]

8. Place a number of pieces into your opponent's supply based on your chosen difficulty level: Normal - 6 pieces, Hard - 3 pieces, or Unbeatable - 0 pieces.[2]

For the Line Clear Variant (5-6 player games):

1. Follow the base game setup.[3]

2. Place only 3 puzzles into each of the puzzle rows.[3]

3. Create a second row of 3 White puzzles and a second row of 3 Black puzzles to the opposite side of the puzzle decks.[3]

4. Place one White marker between the rows of puzzles on the left and give the other to the first player.[3]

5. Place one Black marker between the rows of puzzles on the right and give the other to the 3rd player (in a 5-player game) or the 4th player (in a 6-player game).[3]

For the Finesse expansion:

1. Follow the setup instructions from the base game as normal.[4]

2. Place all of the Credits nearby to form the bank.[4]

3. Separate the Finesse tiles by set according to their backs (A, B, or C).[4]

4. Randomly select 2 tiles from sets A and B, and 6 tiles from set C, then return the rest of the tiles to the box unseen.[4]

5. Shuffle the selected 10 Finesse tiles together without looking at them and deal them below the Black Puzzle row (or rows if playing with the Line Clear variant), placing the first two tiles face down and the rest face up.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Project L — Rulebook · p.4 · PROJECT L BASE GAME · COMPONENTS · SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK Project L — Rulebook · p.8 · SOLO VARIANT · SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK Project L — Rulebook · p.10 · LINE CLEAR VARIANT (5-6 player games) · SETUP · GAMEPLAY · GAME END

[4] RULEBOOK Project L — Rulebook · p.12 · FINESSE EXPANSION · COMPONENTS · SETUP

One rule clearer, zero feelings hurt.

🔧 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 234 ms · ask 9178 ms · total 9414 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 9414 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Build an engine, upgrade pieces, perfect your strategy. 32 White puzzles 20 Black puzzles 135 Pieces (15× each of the 9 shapes) 6 Player mats 4 Markers (2 white and 2 black) 1 Cotton bag The following instructions describe how to set up the game for 2-6 players. For the solo game, see page 8. For a ", "headingPath": "PROJECT L BASE GAME · COMPONENTS · SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 406}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Do you have what it takes to challenge the artificial mastermind? The following instructions describe how to set up the solo game: 1 Select 15 random White puzzles and 10 random Black puzzles. Shuffle each set of puzzles separately and place the Black puzzles face down in the centre of the play area", "headingPath": "SOLO VARIANT · SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 406}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "This expansion introduces a new game module - Finesses. You will have to adjust your tactics to perform various Finesses for which you are rewarded with Credits, a new useful resource which may be traded for extra actions. 35 Credits 30 Finesse tiles 10 of 'Set A' 10 of 'Set B' 10 of 'Set C' This ex", "headingPath": "FINESSE EXPANSION · COMPONENTS · SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 406}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "When playing with more than 4 players, use the Line Clear Variant. Can you handle 4 puzzle rows? Follow the base game setup, but place only 3 puzzles into each of the puzzle rows. After that: Create a second row of 3 White puzzles and a second row of 3 Black puzzles to the opposite side of the puzzl", "headingPath": "LINE CLEAR VARIANT (5-6 player games) · SETUP · GAMEPLAY · GAME END", "sharpsignalDocId": 406}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.046239, "snippet": "5 Take 1 Player mat for each player, making sure you include the board showing the first player marker. Shuffle them and then deal one at In Project L, players will complete a range of puzzles using their pieces to try and earn as many points as they can. The player with the most points at the end o", "headingPath": "SETUP · GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW", "sharpsignalDocId": 406}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "The game is played over a number of rounds. In each round, beginning with the first player and going in clockwise order, each player takes a turn. This continues until the Black puzzle deck is empty. Players complete that round and then play one final round. On your turn, you must perform 3 actions.", "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY · Take · Recycle · Upgrade · Place · Master once per turn.", "sharpsignalDocId": 406}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "You take the first turn, followed by your opponent. This process continues until the end of the game is triggered. Play your turn in the same way as you would in the base game with the following exceptions: Each time you take a puzzle from any of the columns of the puzzle grid, take one piece from a", "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY · YOUR TURN · YOUR OPPONENT'S TURN · After your opponent takes a puzzle: · GAME END · FINAL SCORING", "sharpsignalDocId": 406}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.029418, "snippet": "During a round, only the leftmost Finesse tile can be achieved, and only if it is face up. At the end of each round, the leftmost Finesse tile is removed from the game. Therefore, in the first two rounds of the game, no player can achieve a Finesse (because the initial two tiles are face down.) All ", "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY · Achieving a Finesse · Insert · GAME END · FINISHING TOUCHES", "sharpsignalDocId": 406}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PROJECT L BASE GAME · COMPONENTS · SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 406}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SOLO VARIANT · SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 406}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "LINE CLEAR VARIANT (5-6 player games) · SETUP · GAMEPLAY · GAME END", "sharpsignalDocId": 406}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "FINESSE EXPANSION · COMPONENTS · SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 406}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 406 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 406 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 0.90202 of 2133 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 3, 2026 21:38 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 Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	PROJECT L BASE GAME · COMPONENTS · SETUP	p.4	0.048916 (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 Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	SOLO VARIANT · SETUP	p.8	0.047643 (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 Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	FINESSE EXPANSION · COMPONENTS · SETUP	p.12	0.047123 (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 Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	LINE CLEAR VARIANT (5-6 player games) · SETUP · GAMEPLAY · GAME END	p.10	0.046696 (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 Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	SETUP · GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW	p.5	0.046239 (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 Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	GAMEPLAY · Take · Recycle · Upgrade · Place · Master once per turn.	p.6	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
#7	RULEBOOK Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	GAMEPLAY · YOUR TURN · YOUR OPPONENT'S TURN · After your opponent takes a puzzle: · GAME END · FINAL SCORING	p.9	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
#8	RULEBOOK Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	GAMEPLAY · Achieving a Finesse · Insert · GAME END · FINISHING TOUCHES	p.13	0.029418 (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 80 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 Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	SOLO VARIANT · SETUP	p.8	#2	0.047643 (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 Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	LINE CLEAR VARIANT (5-6 player games) · SETUP · GAMEPLAY · GAME END	p.10	#4	0.046696 (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 Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	SETUP · GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW	p.5	#5	0.046239 (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 Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	GAMEPLAY · YOUR TURN · YOUR OPPONENT'S TURN · After your opponent takes a puzzle: · GAME END · FINAL SCORING	p.9	#7	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
#5	RULEBOOK Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	GAMEPLAY · Take · Recycle · Upgrade · Place · Master once per turn.	p.6	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	FINESSE SOLO VARIANT · SETUP · YOUR TURN · YOUR OPPONENT'S TURN · GAME END · FINISHING TOUCHES · …	p.16	#11	0.02904 (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 Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	FINESSE EXPANSION · COMPONENTS · SETUP	p.12	#3	0.047123 (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 Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	PROJECT L BASE GAME · COMPONENTS · SETUP	p.4	#1	0.048916 (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 Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	PROJECT L BASE GAME · COMPONENTS · SETUP	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	SOLO VARIANT · SETUP	p.8	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	LINE CLEAR VARIANT (5-6 player games) · SETUP · GAMEPLAY · GAME END	p.10	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Project L — Rulebook (corpus doc 406)	FINESSE EXPANSION · COMPONENTS · SETUP	p.12	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 234 ms · first delta 5895 ms · total 9414 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 234 ms · ask 9178 ms · gateway work 9414 ms · total 9414 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3257
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 694
tok/sec: 200.8 tok/sec — 694 output tokens in 3.457 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 49s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 8s 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: 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): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 335), 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.