Ruling — Letter Jam

← Letter Jam

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Letter Jambg-275467-en-1e

Setup

1. Players sit around the table so that every player will be able to see 5 letters once the game is set up.[1][2]

2. Place the numbered tokens, the setup card, and the wildcard in the middle.[1][2]

3. Choose the setup card based on the number of players and place it in the middle of the table.[3]

4. Place red and green clue tokens on the marked spots on the setup card.[3]

5. For any nonplayer stands, give each stand 1 green clue token.[3]

6. Deal a stack of random cards to each nonplayer stand, placing the stack face down atop the clue token; the number of cards is determined by the setup card.[3]

7. Place the top card of each nonplayer stand stack in its stand so all players can see it.[3]

8. Create a secret word for the player on your right by shuffling the deck of letter cards, dividing the deck roughly evenly among all players, and searching your part of the deck to make a 5-letter word.[1]

9. Discard the remaining cards from your part of the deck face down.[1]

10. Once everyone has made a 5-letter word, shuffle the words and pass them to the right.[1]

11. Shuffle all discarded cards to make a deck and place it in the middle of the table.[1]

12. For each player, receive a scrambled secret word (created by the app or the player on your left).[1]

13. Lay your letters in a row face down in front of you, never looking at your own letters.[1]

14. Place your leftmost letter in the stand so it is visible to everyone except you.[1]

15. Take a pencil and a guessing sheet, folding the sheet in the middle to create a screen.[1]

A Turn

1. All players choose a cluegiver together.[4]

2. At the start of each round, players look at the letters in every card stand except their own to look for a word they can spell.[4]

3. The cluegiver takes a clue token (a red token for the first clue, or a green token if they have already given one).[4][5]

4. The cluegiver spells out the clue using numbered tokens, where each token marks the next letter in the clue.[4]

5. When giving a clue, the cluegiver may state how many letters are in the clue, how many players it helps (but not which ones), how many nonplayer stands it uses (but not which ones), how many bonus letters it uses (but not which ones), and whether it uses the wildcard.[4]

6. The cluegiver must not give information about specific players' letters or what kind of word the clue is.[4]

7. Players take turns.[6]

End of the Game

1. The game ends if a round ends with no clue tokens available for the next round.[6]

2. The game ends if everyone decides they do not need any more clues.[6]

3. To play the final round, players rearrange their cards face down to try and spell their secret word.[6]

4. Players can use bonus letters or the wildcard to help spell their word.[6]

5. Everyone reveals their word.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook · p.2

[2] RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook · p.2 · setup · secret word setup

[3] RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook · p.3

[4] RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook · p.4 · Look at the letters. · Choose a cluegiver. · Take a clue token. · Spell the clue. · Do not say … · You can say …

[5] RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook · p.6 · counting clues · With 4, 5, or 6 players: · nonplayer stands

[6] RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook · p.7 · FGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ There are two ways the game can end: · A, O , U Look at your guessing sheet and try to spell a word. · sheet_EN_04.indd 2 Keeping cards face down, rearrange them to spell your secret word. · Everyone reveals their word. · You can use bonus letters or the wildcard to help.

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 82 ms · ask 4936 ms · total 25606 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 20586 ms · generation 5020 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "2 setup player setup You receive a scrambled secret word (created either by the app or by the player on your left). You never look at your own letters. Lay them in a row face down in front of you. Place your leftmost letter in the stand, as shown, so that it is visible to everyone except you. Take a", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 980}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "\u0007 If you end a round with no clue tokens for the next round, the game is over. \u0007 The game ends with leftover tokens if everyone decides they don't need any more clues. You should have a guess for each letter in your row. Hopefully, these letters can be rearranged to spell a word. When you think you'", "headingPath": "FGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ There are two ways the game can end: · A, O , U Look at your guessing sheet and try to spell a word. · sheet_EN_04.indd 2 Keeping cards face down, rearrange them to spell your secret word. · Everyone reveals their word. · You can use bonus letters or the wildcard to help.", "sharpsignalDocId": 980}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Players sit around the table so that every player will be able to see 5 letters once the game is set up. The numbered tokens, the setup card, and the wildcard go in the middle. Start by making a secret word for the player on your right: \u0007 Shuffle the deck of letter cards.", "headingPath": "setup · secret word setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 980}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "3 nonplayer stands You always use all six stands. If you have fewer than 6 players, some stands will be nonplayer stands. Give each nonplayer stand 1 green clue token. Deal each nonplayer stand a stack of random cards from the deck. Place this stack face down atop the clue token. The number of cards", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 980}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "A E All players who chose to move on get new letters. Whenever you return a letter to your row, move your stand one space right and give it the next letter. 11/07/2019 03:51 You must progress from left to right. Once you move on from a letter, you can never return to it. Once everyone has decided, t", "headingPath": "setup for next round", "sharpsignalDocId": 980}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Late in the game, some players will run out of letter cards. If you return your last card to your row, draw a new one from the deck. Place your stand in front of your row to show you are done with your original letters. When someone uses this extra letter in a clue, you can try to guess it. State yo", "headingPath": "bonus letters", "sharpsignalDocId": 980}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Letter Jam is a cooperative game for 2 to 6 players. In each round, every player has a letter that everyone else can see. But no one can see their own letter! Players try to find words that can be made with the letters they see. The player with the best clue spells it by marking the letters with num", "headingPath": "welcome to the jam · components · rules overview video", "sharpsignalDocId": 980}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "The tokens on the setup card represent the clues you can give. You always take a token when you give a clue. Take a red token when you give your first clue. If you have already given one, take a green token whenever you give a clue. Initially, the only available green tokens are those on the leaves.", "headingPath": "counting clues · With 4, 5, or 6 players: · nonplayer stands", "sharpsignalDocId": 980}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 980}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "setup · secret word setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 980}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 980}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Look at the letters. · Choose a cluegiver. · Take a clue token. · Spell the clue. · Do not say … · You can say …", "sharpsignalDocId": 980}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "counting clues · With 4, 5, or 6 players: · nonplayer stands", "sharpsignalDocId": 980}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "FGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ There are two ways the game can end: · A, O , U Look at your guessing sheet and try to spell a word. · sheet_EN_04.indd 2 Keeping cards face down, rearrange them to spell your secret word. · Everyone reveals their word. · You can use bonus letters or the wildcard to help.", "sharpsignalDocId": 980}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 980 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 980 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 0.90096 of 2282 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 02:51 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 Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)		p.2	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	FGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ There are two ways the game can end: · A, O , U Look at your guessing sheet and try to spell a word. · sheet_EN_04.indd 2 Keeping cards face down, rearrange them to spell your secret word. · Everyone reveals their word. · You can use bonus letters or the wildcard to help.	p.7	0.047379 (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 Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	setup · secret word setup	p.2	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))	272
#4	RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)		p.3	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 Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	setup for next round	p.5	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
#6	RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	bonus letters	p.6	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
#7	RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	welcome to the jam · components · rules overview video	p.1	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 Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	counting clues · With 4, 5, or 6 players: · nonplayer stands	p.6	0.029412 (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 12 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 Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)		p.2	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	FGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ There are two ways the game can end: · A, O , U Look at your guessing sheet and try to spell a word. · sheet_EN_04.indd 2 Keeping cards face down, rearrange them to spell your secret word. · Everyone reveals their word. · You can use bonus letters or the wildcard to help.	p.7	#2	0.047379 (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 Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	Look at the letters. · Choose a cluegiver. · Take a clue token. · Spell the clue. · Do not say … · You can say …	p.4	#9	0.014493 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	counting clues · With 4, 5, or 6 players: · nonplayer stands	p.6	#8	0.029412 (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 Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	setup for next round	p.5	#5	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 Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	bonus letters	p.6	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)		p.3	#4	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	setup · secret word setup	p.2	#3	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))	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 Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	setup · secret word setup	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	Look at the letters. · Choose a cluegiver. · Take a clue token. · Spell the clue. · Do not say … · You can say …	p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	counting clues · With 4, 5, or 6 players: · nonplayer stands	p.6	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Letter Jam — Rulebook (corpus doc 980)	FGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ There are two ways the game can end: · A, O , U Look at your guessing sheet and try to spell a word. · sheet_EN_04.indd 2 Keeping cards face down, rearrange them to spell your secret word. · Everyone reveals their word. · You can use bonus letters or the wildcard to help.	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 82 ms · first delta 1398 ms · total 25606 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 20586 ms · retrieval 82 ms · ask 4936 ms · gateway work 5020 ms · total 25606 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2846
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 724
tok/sec: 202.3 tok/sec — 724 output tokens in 3.579 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 57s 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: 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 910), 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.