Ruling — Pixies

← Pixies

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Pixiesbg-411875-en-1e

Setup

1. Shuffle the cards into a deck and place them facedown.[1]

2. Choose the first player at random.[1]

A Turn

1. The first player reveals as many cards from the deck as there are players.[1]

2. In turn order going clockwise, each player must take 1 of those cards and place it in their playing area following the placement rules.[1]

3. The last player has no choice other than to take the last remaining card.[1]

4. The turn is finished.[1]

5. The player who chose their card last starts the next turn.[1]

*Note: In a 2-player game, 4 cards are revealed and players take turns until the last card is chosen, meaning each player plays twice per turn.[1] *

Card Placement Rules

A player's playing area consists of 9 spaces.[2] Placement follows these scenarios:

* Case 1: If the player does not have a faceup card with the card's number, they must place the card faceup in the space matching its number.[2] If that space is occupied by a facedown card, they must place their card on top of it.[2] A faceup card covering a facedown card is "validated" and earns points at the end of the round.[2]

* Case 2: If the player already has a faceup card with that number, they must choose which of the 2 cards to keep faceup; the other is flipped over and placed underneath it, ensuring it is partially visible to opponents.[2]

* Case 3: If the player already has a validated faceup card with that number, they must place their card facedown on any empty space, regardless of its number.[2][3] This card cannot be placed under another card to validate it, though it can be covered later by a card bearing the number of that space to be directly validated.[2][3]

End of the Round

1. A round ends at the end of any turn (after all players have placed a card) when a player has filled all 9 of their spaces.[4]

2. In a 2-player game, the round can also end when there are 2 cards left to take, provided the second player places their card so both players have played the same number of times.[4]

3. Points are counted and scores are noted.[4]

4. To prepare for the next round, all cards are shuffled to create a new deck, and the last player to play starts the new round.[5]

Scoring

* Validated cards: Earn as many points as the number on the card.[4]

* Spirals: Earn 1 point.[4]

* Crosses: Cause the player to lose 1 point.[4]

* Special cards: Earn 1 spiral for each faceup card of the indicated color.[4]

* Largest color zone: Made of at least 2 cards of the same color touching along a side (diagonals do not count); each card in the largest zone earns 2 points in round 1, 3 points in round 2, and 4 points in round 3.[4]

End of the Game

1. After 3 rounds, players add up their scores from all 3 rounds.[5]

2. The player with the most points wins; in the event of a tie, victory is shared.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Pixies — Rulebook · p.1 · COMPONENTS · GAME SETUP · GAME OBJECTIVE · GAME TURNS

[2] RULEBOOK Pixies — Rulebook · p.1 · CARD PLACEMENT RULES

[3] RULEBOOK Pixies — Rulebook · p.1 · CARD PLACEMENT RULES

[4] RULEBOOK Pixies — Rulebook · p.1 · END OF THE ROUND · SCORING · Validated cards · Symbols · The player's largest color zone · PIXIES_cards.indd 14 PIXIES_cards.indd 46 07/12/2023 16:03:15 Points for validated cards · …

[5] RULEBOOK Pixies — Rulebook · p.1 · Points for the largest color zone · PREPARATION FOR THE NEXT ROUND · END OF THE GAME · Example of Counting Score · NOTING YOUR SCORE · COLORADD · …

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 175 ms · ask 15213 ms · total 90845 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 75453 ms · generation 15392 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 1, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "PIXIE 70 cards, 1 rulebook. 07/12/2023 16:03:07 07/1 03:07 PIXIES_cards.indd 48 PIXIES_c .indd 48 Front 07/12/2023 16:03:15 6:03:15 07/12/2 dd 20 PIXIES_cards.indd 20 PIXIES_cards.indd 1 11/12/2023 14:57:32 Back Shuffle the cards into a deck, placed facedown. Choose the first player at random. The p", "headingPath": "COMPONENTS · GAME SETUP · GAME OBJECTIVE · GAME TURNS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1096}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "Each player's playing area consists of 9 spaces. If possible, you must put the card in the space matching its number, but cards already in play may affect where and how you play the card. There are 3 possible scenarios: Case 1. The player does not have a faceup card with this number. They must place", "headingPath": "CARD PLACEMENT RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1096}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "The end of the round is triggered when, at the end of any turn (after all players have placed a card), a player has filled all 9 of their spaces, regardless of whether the cards are faceup or facedown. The points are then counted, and the score of each player is noted. In a 2-player game, the round ", "headingPath": "END OF THE ROUND · SCORING · Validated cards · Symbols · The player's largest color zone · PIXIES_cards.indd 14 PIXIES_cards.indd 46 07/12/2023 16:03:15 Points for validated cards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1096}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "4 connected blue cards ( 1 , 2 , 3 and 4 ) x 2 points for round 1 = 8 points A total of 40 points for this player's first round! A multi-colored card has all the colors at the same time. This means that it counts for the player's color zone of course, but also for all t h e i r special cards as well", "headingPath": "Points for the largest color zone · PREPARATION FOR THE NEXT ROUND · END OF THE GAME · Example of Counting Score · NOTING YOUR SCORE · COLORADD · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1096}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "The player already has a faceup card with this number and it is already validated. They must place their card facedown on any empty space , regardless of its number. Note: This card cannot be placed under another card to validate it. It can be covered later with a card bearing the number of that spa", "headingPath": "CARD PLACEMENT RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1096}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "COMPONENTS · GAME SETUP · GAME OBJECTIVE · GAME TURNS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1096}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CARD PLACEMENT RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1096}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CARD PLACEMENT RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1096}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "END OF THE ROUND · SCORING · Validated cards · Symbols · The player's largest color zone · PIXIES_cards.indd 14 PIXIES_cards.indd 46 07/12/2023 16:03:15 Points for validated cards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1096}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Points for the largest color zone · PREPARATION FOR THE NEXT ROUND · END OF THE GAME · Example of Counting Score · NOTING YOUR SCORE · COLORADD · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1096}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1096 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1096 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 0.88559 of 2325 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:02 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 Pixies — Rulebook (corpus doc 1096)	COMPONENTS · GAME SETUP · GAME OBJECTIVE · GAME TURNS	p.1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Pixies — Rulebook (corpus doc 1096)	CARD PLACEMENT RULES	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 Pixies — Rulebook (corpus doc 1096)	END OF THE ROUND · SCORING · Validated cards · Symbols · The player's largest color zone · PIXIES_cards.indd 14 PIXIES_cards.indd 46 07/12/2023 16:03:15 Points for validated cards · …	p.1	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
#4	RULEBOOK Pixies — Rulebook (corpus doc 1096)	Points for the largest color zone · PREPARATION FOR THE NEXT ROUND · END OF THE GAME · Example of Counting Score · NOTING YOUR SCORE · COLORADD · …	p.1	0.047371 (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 Pixies — Rulebook (corpus doc 1096)	CARD PLACEMENT RULES	p.1	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 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 Pixies — Rulebook (corpus doc 1096)	CARD PLACEMENT RULES	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
#2	RULEBOOK Pixies — Rulebook (corpus doc 1096)	COMPONENTS · GAME SETUP · GAME OBJECTIVE · GAME TURNS	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
#3	RULEBOOK Pixies — Rulebook (corpus doc 1096)	CARD PLACEMENT RULES	p.1	#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
#4	RULEBOOK Pixies — Rulebook (corpus doc 1096)	END OF THE ROUND · SCORING · Validated cards · Symbols · The player's largest color zone · PIXIES_cards.indd 14 PIXIES_cards.indd 46 07/12/2023 16:03:15 Points for validated cards · …	p.1	#3	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
#5	RULEBOOK Pixies — Rulebook (corpus doc 1096)	Points for the largest color zone · PREPARATION FOR THE NEXT ROUND · END OF THE GAME · Example of Counting Score · NOTING YOUR SCORE · COLORADD · …	p.1	#4	0.047371 (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 Pixies — Rulebook (corpus doc 1096)	COMPONENTS · GAME SETUP · GAME OBJECTIVE · GAME TURNS	p.1	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Pixies — Rulebook (corpus doc 1096)	CARD PLACEMENT RULES	p.1	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Pixies — Rulebook (corpus doc 1096)	CARD PLACEMENT RULES	p.1	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Pixies — Rulebook (corpus doc 1096)	END OF THE ROUND · SCORING · Validated cards · Symbols · The player's largest color zone · PIXIES_cards.indd 14 PIXIES_cards.indd 46 07/12/2023 16:03:15 Points for validated cards · …	p.1	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Pixies — Rulebook (corpus doc 1096)	Points for the largest color zone · PREPARATION FOR THE NEXT ROUND · END OF THE GAME · Example of Counting Score · NOTING YOUR SCORE · COLORADD · …	p.1	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 175 ms · first delta 1617 ms · total 90845 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 75453 ms · retrieval 175 ms · ask 15213 ms · gateway work 15392 ms · total 90845 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2813
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 751
tok/sec: 55.0 tok/sec — 751 output tokens in 13.649 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 25s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 4s 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 1026), 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.