You asked
How do I play?
Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstainAsked with: ZÈRTZbg-528-en-1e
I looked through ZÈRTZ's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.
The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.
A game about making sacrifices ! The third game of Project GIPF. For 2 players. Strange… A board that gets smaller and two players playing with the same marbles... In the beginning you'll have to get used to it, but once you do, you'll find out that there are many ways to get the game under control.
sufficient. Amaze yourself! Be inspired! Use your imagination! Do the GIPF and look out for the potentials that are yet to come! If you want to increase the possibilities of playing GIPF even more, look for GIPF Set No. 1 (item no. 49052, containing 12 TAMSKpotentials), or contact Schmidt Spiele to
way of capturing. Pieces that are jumped over remain on the board. The consequences of a jump with a potential are exactly the same as when playing with a piece out of the reserve. E.g. capturing pieces can be the result of a jump. The particular ability of a potential can be used only once. As a si
The ZÈRTZ-potential has the ability to jump over other pieces. Making a jump counts as a turn, meaning that you make a move with a potential instead of playing with a piece out of your reserve. Note: the use of the TAMSK-potential is connected to a condition: you must push a piece loaded with a TAMS
ZÈRTZ-potentials - just like TAMSK-potentials are pieces that you can add to GIPF, in particular when playing the tournament version. We advise you not to start playing with potentials until you have mastered the basic strategies of GIPF. The more you first enjoy GIPF as a game in itself, the more y
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
- outcome
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- warm abstain
-
- this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)
- corpus profile
- live,vps
- answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
- gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
- timings
- search 91 ms · ask 1432 ms · total 1524 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 1524 ms
- retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
- [{"page": 1, "score": 0.048172, "snippet": "A game about making sacrifices ! The third game of Project GIPF. For 2 players. Strange… A board that gets smaller and two players playing with the same marbles... In the beginning you'll have to get used to it, but once you do, you'll find out that there are many ways to get the game under control.", "headingPath": "E N G L I S H · A CONTENTS · B AIM · C PREPARATION · D MAKING A MOVE · PLACING A MARBLE AND REMOVING A BOARD PIECE", "sharpsignalDocId": 976}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "sufficient. Amaze yourself! Be inspired! Use your imagination! Do the GIPF and look out for the potentials that are yet to come! If you want to increase the possibilities of playing GIPF even more, look for GIPF Set No. 1 (item no. 49052, containing 12 TAMSKpotentials), or contact Schmidt Spiele to ", "headingPath": "potential", "sharpsignalDocId": 976}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.047875, "snippet": "way of capturing. Pieces that are jumped over remain on the board. The consequences of a jump with a potential are exactly the same as when playing with a piece out of the reserve. E.g. capturing pieces can be the result of a jump. The particular ability of a potential can be used only once. As a si", "headingPath": "potential · C COMBINATION WITH OTHER GAMES · 2. Neutralising a ZÈRTZ-potential:", "sharpsignalDocId": 976}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "The ZÈRTZ-potential has the ability to jump over other pieces. Making a jump counts as a turn, meaning that you make a move with a potential instead of playing with a piece out of your reserve. Note: the use of the TAMSK-potential is connected to a condition: you must push a piece loaded with a TAMS", "headingPath": "B USE OF THE SPECIAL ABILIT Y", "sharpsignalDocId": 976}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045805, "snippet": "ZÈRTZ-potentials - just like TAMSK-potentials are pieces that you can add to GIPF, in particular when playing the tournament version. We advise you not to start playing with potentials until you have mastered the basic strategies of GIPF. The more you first enjoy GIPF as a game in itself, the more y", "headingPath": "ZÈRTZ has the potential of a \"jump\" ! · A GENERAL USE", "sharpsignalDocId": 976}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045455, "snippet": "The tournament version of ZÈRTZ is played with all 24 marbles: 6 whites, 8 greys and 10 blacks. The rules remain exactly as they are, but to win you must either obtain 3 marbles of each color, or 4 whites, or 5 greys, or 6 blacks. If you select a marble of a certain color from the pool, you must pla", "headingPath": "H TOURNAMENT RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 976}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.044136, "snippet": "E N G L I S H DIAGRAM 4: if you remove the board piece indicated by the arrow, you capture the marble on the isolated board piece. You can only capture marbles this way if there are no vacant board pieces in the isolated group. So, you may claim one or more board pieces when you either put a marble ", "headingPath": "E I S OL ATING MARBLES · F END OF THE GAME · G SPECIAL CASES", "sharpsignalDocId": 976}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "piece must be vacant and it must be positioned at the edge of the board. In other words, there may not be a marble on it and you must be able to remove it from the sides without disturbing the position of the remaining board pieces. DIAGRAM 2: only the board pieces with an arrow may be removed. Plac", "headingPath": "PLACING A MARBLE AND REMOVING A BOARD PIECE · CAPTURING MARBLES · DIAGRAM 3:", "sharpsignalDocId": 976}]
- citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
- []
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 976 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 976 boosted
- answered-before recall
-
no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
- debug row recorded
- Sep 14, 2026 23:52 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 ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | E N G L I S H · A CONTENTS · B AIM · C PREPARATION · D MAKING A MOVE · PLACING A MARBLE AND REMOVING A BOARD PIECE | p.1 | 0.048172 (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 ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | potential | p.8 | 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 ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | potential · C COMBINATION WITH OTHER GAMES · 2. Neutralising a ZÈRTZ-potential: | p.7 | 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 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | B USE OF THE SPECIAL ABILIT Y | p.7 | 0.046875 (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 ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | ZÈRTZ has the potential of a "jump" ! · A GENERAL USE | p.6 | 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 ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | H TOURNAMENT RULES | p.3 | 0.045455 (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 ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | E I S OL ATING MARBLES · F END OF THE GAME · G SPECIAL CASES | p.3 | 0.044136 (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 ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | PLACING A MARBLE AND REMOVING A BOARD PIECE · CAPTURING MARBLES · DIAGRAM 3: | 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)) | 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 ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | H TOURNAMENT RULES | p.3 | #6 | 0.045455 (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 ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | B USE OF THE SPECIAL ABILIT Y | p.7 | #4 | 0.046875 (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 ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | potential | p.8 | #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 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | potential · C COMBINATION WITH OTHER GAMES · 2. Neutralising a ZÈRTZ-potential: | p.7 | #3 | 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 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | A GENERAL USE | p.7 | #11 | 0.02879 (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 re-ranker chose it |
| #6 | RULEBOOK ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | C THE ZÈRTZ-POTENTIAL | p.5 | #10 | 0.028986 (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 re-ranker chose it |
| #7 | RULEBOOK ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | ZÈRTZ has the potential of a "jump" ! · A GENERAL USE | p.6 | #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 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK ZÈRTZ — Rulebook (corpus doc 976) | E N G L I S H · A CONTENTS · B AIM · C PREPARATION · D MAKING A MOVE · PLACING A MARBLE AND REMOVING A BOARD PIECE | p.1 | #1 | 0.048172 (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
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.
| # | document | heading | page | quote chars |
|---|
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 91 ms · first delta 1417 ms · total 1524 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 91 ms · ask 1432 ms · gateway work 1524 ms · total 1524 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 3391
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 9
- tok/sec
- 180.0 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.050 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 9s 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
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- abstain rationale
-
I don't have enough information.
BOILERPLATE, not reasoning: this is the answerer's fixed abstention phrase, the same sentence it emits whenever it declines. It records THAT the answerer declined and never why — no per-ruling reason was captured, because none was sent. Hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped
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 906), 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.