Ruling — Ubongo

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Ubongobg-16986-en-1e

Setup

1. Put all gems into the cloth bag.[1]

2. Take the 36 puzzle boards and place them in a stack in the center of the table with the three-tile tasks face down.[1]

3. Each player receives a set of 12 different tiles, one of each color.[2] In a game of fewer than four players, put the tiles that are not needed back into the box.[2]

4. Place the game round track in the center of the table.[2]

5. Take nine sapphires (blue) and nine ambers (brown) from the bag and put them into the corresponding holes of the game round track.[2]

6. Place the hourglass and the die on the table.[2]

7. Each player takes a puzzle board from the stack and places it in front of themselves, turning it over so the three-tile tasks are visible.[2]

A Turn

1. The youngest player rolls the die and flips the hourglass.[2] (In subsequent rounds, the die is rolled and the hourglass is flipped by the player to the left of the player who rolled the die in the previous round).[3]

2. Each player looks at their own puzzle board and, from their supply of 12 tiles, selects the tiles shown next to the symbol rolled as fast as they can.[4]

3. Once the required tiles are found, players try to fit them exactly into the light-colored placement area of their puzzle board, covering the area completely without tiles protruding laterally, using rotation and flipping if necessary.[4]

4. As soon as a player completes their task, they shout "Ubongo!".[4]

5. Other players continue trying to complete their tasks before the hourglass runs out.[4]

6. As soon as a player notices the hourglass has run out, they shout "Stop," and all players must immediately stop.[4]

7. If nobody completed their task before the hourglass ran out, a second-chance round takes place where the hourglass is flipped again to continue trying to cover the placement area; if nobody can cover their area before the hourglass runs out again, the round ends.[4]

Scoring and Rewards

1. Players who completed their task before the hourglass ran out receive a gem from the bag.[1]

2. The fastest player to fit the tiles and shout "Ubongo!" takes one blue sapphire from the game round track and randomly takes one gem from the bag.[4]

3. The second fastest player receives one brown amber from the game round track and randomly takes one gem from the bag.[4]

4. The third and fourth fastest players randomly take one gem from the bag.[4]

5. Players who could not completely cover their placement areas before the hourglass ran out receive nothing in that round.[3]

6. At the end of the game, each player adds up the values of the gems they have collected (Red = 4, Blue = 3, Green = 2, Brown = 1).[5][2]

7. The player with the most points wins.[3]

8. If players tie for the highest score, a "playoff" occurs where one player rolls the die and the first player to complete the task wins the whole game.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Ubongo — Rulebook · p.1 · Game Overview · Game Components · Preparation

[2] RULEBOOK Ubongo — Rulebook · p.1 · Puzzle board front · Sequence of Play · Round Sequence

[3] RULEBOOK Ubongo — Rulebook · p.2 · Game Designer: · End of the Round · New Round · End of the Game

[4] RULEBOOK Ubongo — Rulebook · p.2 · Example: · Second-Chance Round · Rewards

[5] RULEBOOK Ubongo — Rulebook · p.2 · Example: · Solo Variant

Now you know — make it count.

🔧 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 239 ms · ask 4267 ms · total 4508 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4508 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 1, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Sprint to Solve the Puzzle For 1-4 Players, Ages 8 Years and Up Each player receives one set of 12 tiles. At the beginning of each round, each player also receives a new puzzle board. The task to be completed on each puzzle board is determined by rolling the die; immediately afterward, the hourglass", "headingPath": "Game Overview · Game Components · Preparation", "sharpsignalDocId": 1248}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "Easy tasks Placement area Puzzle board back Placement area More difficult tasks -> \u0007 Each player receives a set of 12 different tiles , one of each color. \u0007 In a game of fewer than four players, put the tiles that are not needed back into the box. -> \u0007 Place the game round track in the center of the", "headingPath": "Puzzle board front · Sequence of Play · Round Sequence", "sharpsignalDocId": 1248}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.047875, "snippet": "At the end of the game, one of the players has one red ruby, one blue sapphire, three green emeralds, and three brown ambers. Therefore, he has earned 1 x 4 + 1 x 3 + 3 x 2 + 3 x 1 = 16 points If you want to play Ubongo by yourself, you need a clock or stopwatch. Note: The Play Smarter app also incl", "headingPath": "Example: · Solo Variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 1248}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046394, "snippet": "Grzegorz Rejchtman, born in 1970 in Poland, lives in Monaco. A computer science and economics graduate, he prefers games that are fast to learn, communicative, and fun. He has published many games in Scandinavia and worldwide. Grzegorz Rejchtman and KOSMOS thank all of the play-testers and all the p", "headingPath": "Game Designer: · End of the Round · New Round · End of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1248}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "-> \u0007 Each player takes a look at his or her own puzzle board and, from his or her supply of 12 tiles , selects the tiles shown next to the symbol rolled, as fast as he or she can. -> \u0007 As soon as you have found the required tiles, you try to fit the tiles exactly into the light-colored placement are", "headingPath": "Example: · Second-Chance Round · Rewards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1248}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Overview · Game Components · Preparation", "sharpsignalDocId": 1248}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Puzzle board front · Sequence of Play · Round Sequence", "sharpsignalDocId": 1248}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Designer: · End of the Round · New Round · End of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1248}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Example: · Second-Chance Round · Rewards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1248}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Example: · Solo Variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 1248}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1248 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1248 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 0.91014 of 2348 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 10:51 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 Ubongo — Rulebook (corpus doc 1248)	Game Overview · Game Components · Preparation	p.1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Ubongo — Rulebook (corpus doc 1248)	Puzzle board front · Sequence of Play · Round Sequence	p.1	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 Ubongo — Rulebook (corpus doc 1248)	Example: · Solo Variant	p.2	0.047875 (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 Ubongo — Rulebook (corpus doc 1248)	Game Designer: · End of the Round · New Round · End of the Game	p.2	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
#5	RULEBOOK Ubongo — Rulebook (corpus doc 1248)	Example: · Second-Chance Round · Rewards	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

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 Ubongo — Rulebook (corpus doc 1248)	Example: · Solo Variant	p.2	#3	0.047875 (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 Ubongo — Rulebook (corpus doc 1248)	Example: · Second-Chance Round · Rewards	p.2	#5	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
#3	RULEBOOK Ubongo — Rulebook (corpus doc 1248)	Game Designer: · End of the Round · New Round · End of the Game	p.2	#4	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 Ubongo — Rulebook (corpus doc 1248)	Game Overview · Game Components · Preparation	p.1	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Ubongo — Rulebook (corpus doc 1248)	Puzzle board front · Sequence of Play · Round Sequence	p.1	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Ubongo — Rulebook (corpus doc 1248)	Game Overview · Game Components · Preparation	p.1	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Ubongo — Rulebook (corpus doc 1248)	Puzzle board front · Sequence of Play · Round Sequence	p.1	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Ubongo — Rulebook (corpus doc 1248)	Game Designer: · End of the Round · New Round · End of the Game	p.2	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Ubongo — Rulebook (corpus doc 1248)	Example: · Second-Chance Round · Rewards	p.2	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Ubongo — Rulebook (corpus doc 1248)	Example: · Solo Variant	p.2	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 239 ms · first delta 1034 ms · total 4508 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 239 ms · ask 4267 ms · gateway work 4508 ms · total 4508 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2358
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 697
tok/sec: 203.4 tok/sec — 697 output tokens in 3.426 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 29s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 24h, checked 1s 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 1178), 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.