You asked
How do I set up the game?
Answered counted as answeredFor 2 & 3 player games: 1. Before inserting any Kittens into the deck, randomly remove about one-third of the deck from the game [1]. 2. Shuffle the appropriate number of Exploding Kittens into the Draw Pile [1]. 3. Shuffle the deck and put it face down in the middle of the table to create your Draw Pile, leaving space for a Discard Pile [1]. 4. Pick a player to go first [1]. For other player counts: 1. Remove all 4 Exploding Kittens from the deck and set them aside [2]. 2. Remove all 6 Defuses from the deck and deal 1 to each player [2]. 3. Shuffle 2 of the extra Defuses back into the deck and remove the rest from the game [2]. 4. Shuffle the deck and deal 7 cards face down to each player, so everyone has a hand of 8 cards total (7 cards + 1 Defuse) [2]. 5. Insert enough Exploding Kittens back into the deck so that there is 1 fewer than the number of people playing, removing any extra Kittens from the game [2].
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
- outcome
- ANSWERED — Answered
- corpus profile
- live
- answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
- gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
- timings
- search 244 ms · ask 3618 ms · total 3869 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 3869 ms
- retrieval refs (raw)
- [{"page": 1, "score": 0.032522, "snippet": "ORIGINAL EDITION! WWW.EXPLODINGKITTENS.COM/HOW In the deck of cards are some Exploding Kittens. You play the game by putting the deck face down and taking turns drawing cards until someone draws an Exploding Kitten. When that happens, that person explodes and they are out of the game. All of the oth", "headingPath": "PLAYERS: 2-5 CONTENTS: 56 CARDS · OUR INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO: · how it works · BASICALLY · if you don't explode, YOU WIN. · and all of the other cards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 153}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.016393, "snippet": "- RECOMMENDED FOR 2 & 3 PLAYER GAMES - Before inserting any Kittens into the deck, randomly remove about one-third of the deck from the game (you will be playing with approximately two-thirds of a deck, but you won't know which cards have been removed). Then, shuffle the appropriate number of Explod", "headingPath": "FASTER GAME VARIANT · TAKING YOUR TURN · PLAY · Pass · REMEMBER · Ending the game · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 153}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.015873, "snippet": "Force any other player to give you 1 card from their hand. They choose which card to give you. Stop any action except for an Exploding Kitten or a Defuse. It's as if the card beneath a Nope never existed. You can also play a Nope on another Nope to negate it and create a Yup, and so on. You can play", "headingPath": "favor 4 cards · NOPE 5 cards · shuffle 4 cards · skip 4 cards · see the future ( 3x ) 5 cards · CAT CARDS 4 OF EACH · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 153}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.015625, "snippet": "YOU SUSPECT THE TOP CARD IN THE DRAW PILE IS AN 'EXPLODING KITTEN.' SO INSTEAD OF PASSING AND THEN DRAWING A CARD TO END YOUR TURN, YOU DECIDE TO PLAY A 'SEE THE FUTURE,' ALLOWING YOU TO PRIVATELY PEEK AT THE TOP 3 CARDS IN THE DRAW PILE. While viewing the top 3 cards you see that you were right, an", "headingPath": "Example Turn · kittens · Exploding Kitten 4 cards · DEFUSE 6 cards · 2x 4 cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 153}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.015385, "snippet": "Exactly the same as Two of a Kind, but you get to name the card you want from the other player. If they have it, you get to take it. If not, you get nothing. Ignore the instructions on the cards when you play them as a Special Combo. I'd like your Defuse, please. ©2025 EXPLODING KITTENS | MADE IN CH", "headingPath": "three of a kind", "sharpsignalDocId": 153}]
- citations (raw)
- [{"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "FASTER GAME VARIANT · TAKING YOUR TURN · PLAY · Pass · REMEMBER · Ending the game · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 153}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYERS: 2-5 CONTENTS: 56 CARDS · OUR INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO: · how it works · BASICALLY · if you don't explode, YOU WIN. · and all of the other cards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 153}]
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it); rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it)
- 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)
- debug row retained until
- Oct 31, 2026 14:24
retrieval — what the search arm returned
score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. How many arms fused this ruling was NOT RECORDED (it predates the boost trail, ran on the path that stored none, or stored one that could not be read), and the ceiling depends on that count (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60): 2 arms top out at 0.03279; 3 arms top out at 0.04918. So a score above 0.03279 here is not an anomaly: it is arithmetic proof a boost arm voted, and the measured band 0.016–0.033 (taken on two-arm asks) is what does not apply. 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 Exploding Kittens — Rulebook (corpus doc 153) | PLAYERS: 2-5 CONTENTS: 56 CARDS · OUR INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO: · how it works · BASICALLY · if you don't explode, YOU WIN. · and all of the other cards · … | p.1 | 0.032522 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Exploding Kittens — Rulebook (corpus doc 153) | FASTER GAME VARIANT · TAKING YOUR TURN · PLAY · Pass · REMEMBER · Ending the game · … | p.1 | 0.016393 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #3 | RULEBOOK Exploding Kittens — Rulebook (corpus doc 153) | favor 4 cards · NOPE 5 cards · shuffle 4 cards · skip 4 cards · see the future ( 3x ) 5 cards · CAT CARDS 4 OF EACH · … | p.2 | 0.015873 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) | 300 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Exploding Kittens — Rulebook (corpus doc 153) | Example Turn · kittens · Exploding Kitten 4 cards · DEFUSE 6 cards · 2x 4 cards | p.2 | 0.015625 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) | 300 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK Exploding Kittens — Rulebook (corpus doc 153) | three of a kind | p.2 | 0.015385 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) | 300 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [1] | RULEBOOK Exploding Kittens — Rulebook (corpus doc 153) | FASTER GAME VARIANT · TAKING YOUR TURN · PLAY · Pass · REMEMBER · Ending the game · … | p.1 | no quote on the wire |
| [2] | RULEBOOK Exploding Kittens — Rulebook (corpus doc 153) | PLAYERS: 2-5 CONTENTS: 56 CARDS · OUR INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO: · how it works · BASICALLY · if you don't explode, YOU WIN. · and all of the other cards · … | p.1 | no quote on the wire |
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 244 ms · first delta 2127 ms · total 3869 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 244 ms · ask 3618 ms · gateway work 3869 ms · total 3869 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 2378
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 252
- tok/sec
- 149.5 tok/sec — 252 output tokens in 1.686 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 29s ago)
- 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
- NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
- pattern that matched
- SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
- matched words (in the normalized question)
-
set up
errata registry — what the gate above had to match against
this game registers NO errata cards (edition 75), 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.