Ruling — Patchwork

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Patchworkbg-163412-en-1e

Setup

1. Place the (regular) patches in a circle around the time board.[1]

2. Place the time board in the center of the table.[1]

3. Locate the smallest patch (i.e., the patch of size 1x2) and place the neutral token between this patch and the next patch in clockwise order.[1]

4. Set the special tile aside.[1]

5. Place the special patches on the marked spaces of the time board.[1]

6. Each player takes a quilt board, a time token, and 5 buttons.[1]

7. Keep the remaining buttons on the table within easy reach.[1]

Playing the Game

1. Place your time tokens on the starting space of the time board.[2]

2. The player who last used a needle goes first.[2]

3. The player whose time token is the furthest behind on the time board takes their turn.[3][1]

4. If both time tokens are on the same space, the player whose token is on top goes first.[3][1]

5. On your turn, perform one of the following actions:

* A: Advance and Receive Buttons: Advance your time token on the time board so that it occupies the space directly in front of your opponent's time token.[3][2][1] Receive 1 button for each space you advance.[3][2][1]

* B: Take and Place a Patch: This action comprises 5 steps:[3][2]

1. Choose a Patch: You can choose from the three patches in front of the neutral token in clockwise order.[3][2] (If these are too expensive or you do not want to purchase any of them, you must choose action A instead).[3][2]

2. Move the Neutral Token: Place the neutral token next to the chosen patch.[2]

3. Pay for the Patch: Return the indicated number of buttons to the supply.[2]

4. Place the Patch on Your Quilt Board: The patches on your quilt board cannot overlap.[3][2] You may turn the patch any way you like before placing it on your quilt board.[3][2]

6. Regardless of the action you take, you must advance your time token on the time board.[4]

7. If you advance your time token more than 3 spaces, you may not immediately take another turn; otherwise, you may immediately take another turn.[3][1]

8. Whenever you move onto or past marked spaces on the time board, resolve the corresponding event:[4]

* Button Income: Take the special patch, if still available, and place it on your quilt board immediately.[4]

* Receive buttons: Receive a number of buttons according to the patches on your quilt board.[4]

Ending the Game and Scoring

1. The game ends after both time tokens reach the last space of the time board.[4] If a time token moves past the last space, it stops on the last space.[4]

2. To score:

* Count the number of buttons you have left.[4]

* Add the value of the special tile if you have it.[4]

* Subtract 2 points from your score for each empty space of your quilt board.[4]

3. The player with the highest score wins.[4] In case of a tie, the player who reached the final space of the time board first wins.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Patchwork — Rulebook · p.1

[2] RULEBOOK Patchwork — Rulebook · p.1

[3] RULEBOOK Patchwork — Rulebook · p.1 · PLAYING THE GAME · A: Advance and Receive Butt ons · B: Take and Place a Patch · 1. Choose a Patch · 4. Place the Patch on Your Quilt Board

[4] RULEBOOK Patchwork — Rulebook · p.2 · 5. Move Your Time Token · The Time Board · Special Patch: · The Special Tile · END OF THE GAME · Scoring · …

One rule clearer, zero feelings hurt.

🔧 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 255 ms · ask 4655 ms · total 4911 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4911 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 1, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "In this game, players do not necessarily alternate taking turns. The player whose ti me token is the furthest behind on the ti me board takes their turn. This may result in a player taking multi ple turns in a row, before their opponent can take one. If both ti me tokens are on the same space, the p", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME · A: Advance and Receive Butt ons · B: Take and Place a Patch · 1. Choose a Patch · 4. Place the Patch on Your Quilt Board", "sharpsignalDocId": 186}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "In this game, players do not necessarily alternate taking turns. The player whose /t_i.liga me token is the furthest behind on the /t_i.liga me board takes their turn. This may result in a player taking mul/t_i.liga ple turns in a row, before their opponent can take one. If both /t_i.liga me tokens ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 186}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "Advance your ti me token on the ti me board by the number of spaces indicated on the label. If your ti me token ends up on the same space as your opponent's ti me token, place your token on top of it. Regardless of the acti on you take, you must advance your ti me token on the ti me board. Some spac", "headingPath": "5. Move Your Time Token · The Time Board · Special Patch: · The Special Tile · END OF THE GAME · Scoring · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 186}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "A: Advance and Receive Bu/t_t.liga ons Advance your /t_i.liga me token on the /t_i.liga me board so that it occupies the space directly in front of your opponent’s /t_i.liga me token. Receive 1 bu/t_t.liga on (i.e., one 1-bu/t_t.liga on /t_i.liga le) for each space you advance. On your turn, perform", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 186}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "(Double-sided: the two sides diff er only in appearance. Choose which side you like bett er.) 2 Quilt Boards (1 per player) 33 Patches 1 Neutral Token 2 Time Tokens (blue and red) 5 Special Patches 1 Special Tile 32 1-Butt on Tiles 12 5-Butt ons Tiles 5 10-Butt ons Tiles 1 20-Butt ons Tile", "headingPath": "1 Main Time Board · Butt on Tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 186}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "More than 10 years ago, Uwe Rosenberg's ingenious Patchwork had kicked off a whole new genre of board games. Today, board game enthusiasts from all over the world are fi tti ng pieces together to create beauti ful patchwork quilts. This new editi on is based on the anniversary editi on of 2024. Uwe ", "headingPath": "ABOUT THIS NEW EDITION", "sharpsignalDocId": 186}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 186}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 186}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME · A: Advance and Receive Butt ons · B: Take and Place a Patch · 1. Choose a Patch · 4. Place the Patch on Your Quilt Board", "sharpsignalDocId": 186}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5. Move Your Time Token · The Time Board · Special Patch: · The Special Tile · END OF THE GAME · Scoring · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 186}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 186 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 186 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 0.87916 of 2342 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 22:03 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 Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)	PLAYING THE GAME · A: Advance and Receive Butt ons · B: Take and Place a Patch · 1. Choose a Patch · 4. Place the Patch on Your Quilt Board	p.1	0.048916 (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 Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)		p.1	0.048652 (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 Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)	5. Move Your Time Token · The Time Board · Special Patch: · The Special Tile · END OF THE GAME · Scoring · …	p.2	0.047123 (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 Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)		p.1	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 Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)	1 Main Time Board · Butt on Tiles	p.2	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))	290
#6	RULEBOOK Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)	ABOUT THIS NEW EDITION	p.2	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

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 6 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 Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)	PLAYING THE GAME · A: Advance and Receive Butt ons · B: Take and Place a Patch · 1. Choose a Patch · 4. Place the Patch on Your Quilt Board	p.1	#1	0.048916 (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 Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)		p.1	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)	1 Main Time Board · Butt on Tiles	p.2	#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 Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)	ABOUT THIS NEW EDITION	p.2	#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
#5	RULEBOOK Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)	5. Move Your Time Token · The Time Board · Special Patch: · The Special Tile · END OF THE GAME · Scoring · …	p.2	#3	0.047123 (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 Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)		p.1	#2	0.048652 (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 Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)		p.1	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)		p.1	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)	PLAYING THE GAME · A: Advance and Receive Butt ons · B: Take and Place a Patch · 1. Choose a Patch · 4. Place the Patch on Your Quilt Board	p.1	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Patchwork — Rulebook (corpus doc 186)	5. Move Your Time Token · The Time Board · Special Patch: · The Special Tile · END OF THE GAME · Scoring · …	p.2	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 255 ms · first delta 1103 ms · total 4911 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 255 ms · ask 4655 ms · gateway work 4911 ms · total 4911 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2841
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 758
tok/sec: 202.0 tok/sec — 758 output tokens in 3.752 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 42s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, 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 104), 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.