Ruling — Encore!

← Encore!

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Encore!bg-206931-en-1e

Setup and Turn Sequence

1. Determine a starting player, who is the first active player.[1][2]

2. The active player throws all six dice once.[1][2]

3. The active player chooses one Color die and one Number die and places them in front of them.[1][2]

4. All other players choose any combination (one Color die and one Number die) from the remaining four dice.[1][2]

5. Exceptionally, for the first three turns, all players may choose a combination from all six thrown dice, and the active player does not remove any dice.[1][2]

6. After all players have chosen a pair and checked boxes, the dice are passed to the next player clockwise.[3][4]

Rules for Checking Boxes

1. To check off boxes, a player must select a combination of one Number die and one Color die.[1][2][5]

2. The player must check off the exact number of adjacent colored boxes indicated by the die.[1][5]

3. At the beginning of the game, the first checked box must be in Column H.[1][2]

4. All checked boxes in a turn must be of the same chosen color and must connect to each other in one "clump".[1][5]

5. Checks must be horizontally or vertically adjacent to at least one already checked box, or start in Column H; diagonal touches do not count as adjacent.[1][5]

6. A player cannot check more than five boxes in one turn.[1][5]

7. The value of a die may not be split up to tick boxes in two separate color blocks of the same color.[1]

8. A player may always choose not to use any combination and check off nothing (passing).[1]

9. If the active player chooses to take no dice, other players may choose from all six dice.[1]

10. Jokers (the Number dice and the black on the Color dice) allow a player to choose any color.[1][4] If choosing the symbol, they can specify a number between one and five, but a Joker cannot be a "6".[1][4] Using a Joker requires checking off an exclamation mark on the Player Sheet.[4]

Scoring and Ending the Game

1. Players earn points by being the first to check off all boxes in a column and all boxes of the same color.[6]

2. For columns, the first player to complete it circles the higher value number and others must cross out that value, leaving the lower value for subsequent players.[3][4][7]

3. For color bonuses, the first player to complete all areas of a color circles the higher value number and others must cross out that value, leaving the lower value for subsequent players.[3][4]

4. The game ends immediately after the turn in which at least one player succeeds in circling their second Color Bonus.[3][7]

5. If the active player ends the game, all other players still finish their turn with the remaining four dice.[3][7]

6. Final points are determined by adding bonus points from color fields and columns, adding 1 point for each remaining exclamation mark, and subtracting 2 points for each unchecked star (up to a maximum loss of 30 points).[3][7]

7. The player with the most points wins; ties are broken by the player with more remaining exclamation points, or by playing an "Encore!" game.[3][7]

[1] RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook · p.2 · GAME PLAY · SELECT A COMBINATION AND CHECK A BOX · THE FOLLOWING RULES APPLY:

[2] RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook · p.3

[3] RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook · p.5 · EXAMPLE: · COLOR BONUS POINTS · GAME END

[4] RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook · p.5

[5] RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook · p.3

[6] RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook · p.1 · GAME OVERVIEW · PREPARATION · 8+ 1 -6 · CONTENTS

[7] RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook · p.5

Rule found, game on.

🔧 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 105 ms · ask 5183 ms · total 10884 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 5594 ms · generation 5290 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 1, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "Players earn points by being the first to check off all boxes in a column, and all boxes of the same color. Players pick a combination of a Color die and a Number die, and check the respective boxes. Only boxes connected to other boxes can be checked. Make sure to complete columns before other playe", "headingPath": "GAME OVERVIEW · PREPARATION · 8+ 1 -6 · CONTENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1141}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047875, "snippet": "If there are no players at hand, you can play ENCORE! on your own. The solo game is about collecting as many points as possible. The rules of the game remain largely unchanged. However, the player may play only with 2 Color and 2 Number dice. After every roll, they have to make a slash in one of the", "headingPath": "SOLO GAME · EXAMPLE:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1141}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.047712, "snippet": "Determine a starting player. This is the first active player, who will throw all six dice once. The active player then chooses one Color die and one Number die , which they place in front of them. They check off the relevant boxes on their Player Sheet (see below). All other players may now choose a", "headingPath": "GAME PLAY · SELECT A COMBINATION AND CHECK A BOX · THE FOLLOWING RULES APPLY:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1141}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "That player lets the rest of the players know they should cross out that value. Other players may still earn points for checking off all of the areas for that color, but they will circle the right (lower value) number. The right (lower value) number is available to all subsequent players; it is neve", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1141}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045805, "snippet": "y ne ints, ers he rst lls s is e he mn . Only the upper value of a column is crossed out. All other players still have the possibility to earn the lower value. In one turn, a player may complete multiple columns, and claim multiple points. If multiple players complete a column on the same turn, all ", "headingPath": "EXAMPLE: · COLOR BONUS POINTS · GAME END", "sharpsignalDocId": 1141}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "EXAMPLE: For the first turn of the of the game, David rolls . One choice (A) is to choose and check off five yellow boxes, which he can do because at least one of the checked boxes is in Column H. He could have also chosen , but that would be an odd choice. Another choice (B) could have been . He wo", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1141}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045688, "snippet": "JOKER The Number and the Color dice are Jokers. If a player chooses the symbol, they can choose any color. If they choose the symbol, they can specify a number between one and five. ATTENTION: You may not choose six even if you wish to fill in a block of 6 boxes as five is the maximum Number die. 6 ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1141}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "If the active player chooses to take no dice, the other players may choose a combination from all of the six dice. SELECT A COMBINATION AND CHECK A BOX To check off boxes, a player must select a combination of dice, one Number die and one Color die, then check off the appropriate number of adjacent ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1141}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME PLAY · SELECT A COMBINATION AND CHECK A BOX · THE FOLLOWING RULES APPLY:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1141}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1141}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "EXAMPLE: · COLOR BONUS POINTS · GAME END", "sharpsignalDocId": 1141}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1141}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1141}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME OVERVIEW · PREPARATION · 8+ 1 -6 · CONTENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1141}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1141}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1141 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1141 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 0.89356 of 2499 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 15:50 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 Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)	GAME OVERVIEW · PREPARATION · 8+ 1 -6 · CONTENTS	p.1	0.047883 (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 Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)	SOLO GAME · EXAMPLE:	p.6	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
#3	RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)	GAME PLAY · SELECT A COMBINATION AND CHECK A BOX · THE FOLLOWING RULES APPLY:	p.2	0.047712 (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 Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)		p.5	0.046402 (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 Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)	EXAMPLE: · COLOR BONUS POINTS · GAME END	p.5	0.045805 (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 Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)		p.3	0.045724 (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 Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)		p.5	0.045688 (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 Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)		p.3	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

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 10 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 Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)	GAME PLAY · SELECT A COMBINATION AND CHECK A BOX · THE FOLLOWING RULES APPLY:	p.2	#3	0.047712 (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 Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)	GAME OVERVIEW · PREPARATION · 8+ 1 -6 · CONTENTS	p.1	#1	0.047883 (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 Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)	EXAMPLE: · COLOR BONUS POINTS · GAME END	p.5	#5	0.045805 (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 Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)		p.5	#7	0.045688 (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 Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)		p.5	#4	0.046402 (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 Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)		p.3	#6	0.045724 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)		p.3	#8	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
#8	RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)	SOLO GAME · EXAMPLE:	p.6	#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))	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 Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)	GAME PLAY · SELECT A COMBINATION AND CHECK A BOX · THE FOLLOWING RULES APPLY:	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)	EXAMPLE: · COLOR BONUS POINTS · GAME END	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)		p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)	GAME OVERVIEW · PREPARATION · 8+ 1 -6 · CONTENTS	p.1	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Encore! — Rulebook (corpus doc 1141)		p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 105 ms · first delta 1374 ms · total 10884 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 5594 ms · retrieval 105 ms · ask 5183 ms · gateway work 5290 ms · total 10884 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3809
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 770
tok/sec: 200.1 tok/sec — 770 output tokens in 3.849 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 20s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 9s 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 1071), 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.