Ruling — Awkward Guests: The Walton Case

← Awkward Guests: The Walton Case

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Awkward Guests: The Walton Casebg-188866-en-1e

To play AWKWARD GUESTS: The Walton Case, follow these steps:

**Setup**

1. Give every player a tracking sheet and a screen.[1]

2. Each player chooses a case solving token.[1]

3. Place offer tokens and inquiry tokens in the center of the table within everyone’s reach.[1]

4. Choose a case from the rulebook or the app and note the case reference number.[1]

5. Without looking at card fronts, separate the 70 cards specified by the case according to the unique card number on their backs to create the game deck.[1]

6. Shuffle the game deck and deal 6 cards to each player.[1]

7. Place remaining cards in the center of the table within reach.[1]

8. Place the discard drawer next to the deck with the “Classified Information” card on top, leaving space for a revealed card pile.[1]

9. The host designates the starting player as the most awkward guest and places the starting player standee in front of their screen.[1]

**Gameplay (The Round)**

The game is played over several rounds in an anticlockwise fashion.[2] Each player's turn consists of three phases:

**I. Inquiry Phase**

1. The active player requests information out loud regarding 2 different references [2] (in a 2-player variant, they must request 4 different references [3]).

2. Possible references include specific guests or rooms in the mansion.[2]

**II. Offer Phase**

1. Starting with the player to the right of the active player and moving anticlockwise, non-active players choose cards from their hands to offer.[2]

2. Offered cards must contain at least one of the requested references.[2]

3. Non-active players place chosen cards face down and inform others of the total information value of those cards, placing an offer token on top with that number.[2]

**III. Exchange Phase**

1. The active player decides which players to exchange cards with.[4]

2. The active player must give each chosen player cards from their hand that sum to a total amount of information points equal to or greater than the amount offered.[4]

3. In the 2-player variant, received cards are not placed in hands; players note information on their tracking sheet and immediately discard them.[3]

4. If no players offer cards, the active player may draw 3 cards from the game deck (or 2 cards in a 2-player variant) and then the turn passes.[4][3]

**End of Round Phases**

At the end of each round, the following occur:

**I. Solution Phase**

1. All players take their case solving token and secretly decide whether to place it on the table with the bright side (to solve the mystery) or the dark side (to continue investigating).[5]

2. Tokens are revealed.[5]

3. Players who chose to solve the mystery must write on their tracking sheet the murderer, motive, weapon, and any accomplice/motive if applicable.[5]

4. Players check their solution against the rulebook or app one by one without revealing their guess.[5]

5. If a player guesses all details correctly, the game ends and they win.[5]

6. If no players guess correctly, those players are eliminated and their cards are placed face up in the revealed card pile.[5]

7. If no players want to guess, the game continues.[5]

**II. Discard Phase (If the game continues)**

1. All players still in the game discard cards until they have 3 cards in hand.[6]

2. The starting player passes the Mr. Walton standee to the player on their right.[6]

3. The new starting player deals cards from the deck to all remaining players until everyone has 6 cards again.[6]

4. A new round starts.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook · p.8

[2] RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook · p.9 · Turn Order and Overview · Inquiry Phase · OfferPhase

[3] RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook · p.10 · Two-player game variant

[4] RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook · p.9 · Exchange Phase

[5] RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook · p.10 · Solution Phase

[6] RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook · p.10 · Discard Phase

🔧 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 106 ms · ask 15043 ms · total 15152 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 15152 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "A 2 player game of AWKWARD GUESTS: The Walton Case is played the same way as the 3-8 player game with the following changes: When making inquiries, you must request information regarding 4 different references instead of 2. Possible references are the same: Mr. Walton's guests: Angelica Albinson , C", "headingPath": "Two-player game variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 503}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045688, "snippet": "Once all non-active players have made their offers, the active player decides with whom to exchange cards. They MAY EXCHANGE CARDS WITH AS MANY PLAYERS AS THEY PLEASE. The active player must give each chosen player cards from their hand (regardless of their references) that sum up to a total amount ", "headingPath": "Exchange Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 503}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045476, "snippet": "AWKWARD GUESTS: The Walton Case is played over several rounds, with each player taking a turn during the round and continuing on in an anticlockwise fashion. Each round starts with the starting player of that round. Each player's turn is divided in 3 phases: Inquiry Phase Offer Phase Exchange Phase ", "headingPath": "Turn Order and Overview · Inquiry Phase · OfferPhase", "sharpsignalDocId": 503}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "All players still in the game must discard cards from their hands until their hands are each down to 3 cards. Discarded cards are placed FACE DOWN in the discard pile drawer, under the 'Classified Information' card. The starting player then passes the Mr. Walton standee to the player on their right.", "headingPath": "Discard Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 503}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "All players take their case solving token. They must decide if they want to place the token on the table showing its bright side to solve the mystery or the dark side to continue with the investigation. Once they have made up their mind, they will secretly place the token on the table, covering the ", "headingPath": "Solution Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 503}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Introduction p. 4 Game Description p. 5 Game Contents p. 6 Game Objective p. 8 Game Setup p. 8 Turn Order and Overview p. 9 Two-Player Game Variant p. 10 Solo Mode Game p. 10 What to do when the game deck runs out p. 10 Game card types and how to use the tracking sheet p. 11 Advice p. 13 Cases p. 14", "headingPath": "Index", "sharpsignalDocId": 503}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "8 Figure 4: Starting player standee. Figure 7: “Classified Information” card. Figure 6: Offer tokens. Game Objective Game Setup Figure 9: Discard pile drawer and its assembly instructions. Investigate clues and exchange information with your opponents to be the first player to solve the mystery of W", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 503}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.030622, "snippet": "AWKWARD GUESTS: The Walton Case comes with 39 predesigned cases classified in 7 levels of difficulty on a scale from 'Beginner' to 'Perfect Crime'. If this is the first time you play AWKWARD GUESTS: The Walton Case , start off with a case in the 'Beginner' difficulty level and play several additiona", "headingPath": "Advice · DIFFICULTY BEGINNER · DIFFICULTY VERY EASY", "sharpsignalDocId": 503}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 503}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Turn Order and Overview · Inquiry Phase · OfferPhase", "sharpsignalDocId": 503}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Two-player game variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 503}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Exchange Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 503}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Solution Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 503}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Discard Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 503}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 503 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 503 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 0.90440 of 2887 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 13, 2026 18:18

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 Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Two-player game variant	p.10	0.048139 (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 Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Exchange Phase	p.9	0.045688 (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 Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Turn Order and Overview · Inquiry Phase · OfferPhase	p.9	0.045476 (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 Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Discard Phase	p.10	0.032787 (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 Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Solution Phase	p.10	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))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Index	p.3	0.03125 (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 Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)		p.8	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
#8	RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Advice · DIFFICULTY BEGINNER · DIFFICULTY VERY EASY	p.14	0.030622 (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 33 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 Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Two-player game variant	p.10	#1	0.048139 (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 Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)		p.8	#7	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
#3	RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Game Description	p.5	#9	0.029572 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Solution Phase	p.10	#5	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
#5	RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Exchange Phase	p.9	#2	0.045688 (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 Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Advice · DIFFICULTY BEGINNER · DIFFICULTY VERY EASY	p.14	#8	0.030622 (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 Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Turn Order and Overview · Inquiry Phase · OfferPhase	p.9	#3	0.045476 (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 Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Discard Phase	p.10	#4	0.032787 (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 Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)		p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Turn Order and Overview · Inquiry Phase · OfferPhase	p.9	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Two-player game variant	p.10	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Exchange Phase	p.9	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Solution Phase	p.10	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Awkward Guests: The Walton Case — Rulebook (corpus doc 503)	Discard Phase	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 106 ms · first delta 4790 ms · total 15152 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 106 ms · ask 15043 ms · gateway work 15152 ms · total 15152 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4543
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 842
tok/sec: 82.1 tok/sec — 842 output tokens in 10.251 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 2s 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: 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 434), 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.