Ruling — Cribbage

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Cribbagebg-2398-en-1e

This game has a verified setup checklist. Every step is quote-checked against the rulebook, judged for entailment, and approved by a person — with honest holes wherever any of that failed.

Open the setup checklist for Cribbage →

1 instruction appeared in both of this checklist's sections — it is shown once, with a pointer to the repeat. This checklist may be incomplete — check the rulebook for anything missing.

approved Aug 5, 2026 · baked by gemma4:12b · prompt checklist-structurer-v4

1. Place the board midway between the players.[1]

2. If three persons play, use a triangular board with three sets of holes and three game holes.[1]

3. If a cribbage board is not available, rule a sheet of paper into ten divisions and mark them with the figures 1 to 0 on each side.[1]

4. Each player is provided with two pegs.[2]

5. Shuffle the pack, and the player who shuffled last must allow the opponent to cut first.[3]

6. When cutting for the first deal, the first player removes no fewer than four cards and no more than half the pack.[3]

7. The second player removes no fewer than four cards and leaves at least four cards.[3]

8. The player cutting the lower-rank card deals the first hand of the game.[3]

9. The dealer shuffles and, after a mandatory cut by the pone (nondealer), distributes one card alternately to each player, beginning with the pone, until each has six cards.[4]

10. Each player discards two cards to form the crib, which belongs to the dealer.[4]

11. The pone cuts the remainder of the pack to select a starter card.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) · p.2 · [Illustration]

[2] RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) · p.2 · CRIBBAGE.

[3] RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) · p.18 · 3.1. Procedure for Cutting the Pack · 3.2. Winner of the Deal · 3.3. Cutting before Each Deal

[4] RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) · p.12 · 1.5. Outline of Playing Sequence

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 149 ms · ask 4912 ms · total 5063 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5063 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 55, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Determine the number of qualifiers (rule 13.2.b). Collect and count scorecards from each table to make sure that all were turned in. Do not write scores in the boxes at the top of scorecards until cross-checking is completed. Initially check the game-points and games-won columns of all scorecards. D", "headingPath": "Method", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Prior to the turn of the starter card, if only one player discards to the wrong side of the board, that player is permitted to retrieve the card(s) and reevaluate the selection. If all four cards are discovered to be on the pone's side, they shall be moved to the dealer's side, without exposure, unl", "headingPath": "5.1. Placement · 5.2. Exposure", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.031778, "snippet": "The board is always placed midway between the players. If three persons play, a triangular board is necessary. This is provided with three sets of holes and three game holes. When a cribbage board is not at hand, the game may be kept by ruling a sheet of paper into ten divisions, and marking them wi", "headingPath": "[Illustration]", "sharpsignalDocId": 223}, {"page": 31, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "If the dealer plays a card before pegging the two points, the dealer forfeits them. After the starter card has been turned, the deck must be placed on the dealer's side of the board. The play of the cards starts immediately after the turn of the starter card. The pone shall play the first card face ", "headingPath": "6.3. Scoring When the Starter Card Is a Jack (His Heels) · 6.4. Placement of Deck after Cut · 7.1. The Order of Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "If the qualifying round has a cut-for-deal format, the pack is cut to determine which player deals first in the game; the low card wins. If the qualifying round has alternate-deal format, there is no cut to determine the first dealer. In an alternate-deal situation, the tournament director must anno", "headingPath": "1.5. Outline of Playing Sequence", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 54, "score": 0.03031, "snippet": "Recommendations for amendments to these rules shall be submitted in writing to the Rules Committee, which will discuss, prepare, and present all relevant proposals to the board of directors for final approval. Whenever possible, (a) establish individual tables of less than 30 players and (b) avoid s", "headingPath": "14.2. Amendments · General Considerations", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 56, "score": 0.029857, "snippet": "Resolve scorecard discrepancies by referring to rule 12.2. 18.Write the score in the boxes at the top of scorecard when cross-checking is completed. In the event that a scorecard is disqualified or changes position because of an error, contact that player with the relevant scorecards as evidence. Ga", "headingPath": "Method", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.029418, "snippet": "In the first deal of the game, once the deck has been cut and dealing begins, it is assumed the cut for deal was made and play continues. After the cards are shuffled and cut, the dealer distributes one card at a time, face down from the top of the pack alternately to each player, starting with the ", "headingPath": "4.1. Order of Dealing · 4.2. Dealing the Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "[Illustration]", "sharpsignalDocId": 223}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CRIBBAGE.", "sharpsignalDocId": 223}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3.1. Procedure for Cutting the Pack · 3.2. Winner of the Deal · 3.3. Cutting before Each Deal", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1.5. Outline of Playing Sequence", "sharpsignalDocId": 151}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 151 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 151 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 0.90476 of 861 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 6, 2026 23:33 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 Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	Method	p.55	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
#2	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	5.1. Placement · 5.2. Exposure	p.28	0.032258 (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 Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) (corpus doc 223)	[Illustration]	p.2	0.031778 (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 Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	6.3. Scoring When the Starter Card Is a Jack (His Heels) · 6.4. Placement of Deck after Cut · 7.1. The Order of Play	p.31	0.031746 (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 Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	1.5. Outline of Playing Sequence	p.12	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
#6	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	14.2. Amendments · General Considerations	p.54	0.03031 (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 Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	Method	p.56	0.029857 (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 Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	4.1. Order of Dealing · 4.2. Dealing the Cards	p.20	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.

one thing that looks wrong and is not: a row a floor seated can carry a fused rank LARGER than the pool size above it. The floors draw from the whole fused list, not only from the passages the re-ranker scored — so a rank past the pool is a floor reaching down for something the re-ranker would never have seen, which is exactly what the floors are for.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) (corpus doc 223)	[Illustration]	p.2	#3	0.031778 (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	guaranteed a slot by the base-rulebook floor
#2	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	Method	p.55	#1	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
#3	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	14.2. Amendments · General Considerations	p.54	#6	0.03031 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) (corpus doc 223)	CRIBBAGE.	p.2	#13	0.013699 (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 Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	9.2. Order of Counting	p.42	#24	0.011905 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	1.5. Outline of Playing Sequence	p.12	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	3.1. Procedure for Cutting the Pack · 3.2. Winner of the Deal · 3.3. Cutting before Each Deal	p.18	#9	0.028992 (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 Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	Method	p.56	#7	0.029857 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) (corpus doc 223)	[Illustration]	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Cribbage — Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914) (corpus doc 223)	CRIBBAGE.	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	3.1. Procedure for Cutting the Pack · 3.2. Winner of the Deal · 3.3. Cutting before Each Deal	p.18	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Cribbage — ACC Tournament Rules (2025) (corpus doc 151)	1.5. Outline of Playing Sequence	p.12	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 149 ms · first delta 3662 ms · total 5063 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 149 ms · ask 4912 ms · gateway work 5063 ms · total 5063 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2283
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 265
tok/sec: 202.0 tok/sec — 265 output tokens in 1.312 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 19s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 24h, checked 2s 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: SERVED — setup-shaped and this game's approved setup checklist is offered above
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 73), 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.