Ruling — Time's Up!

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Time's Up!bg-1353-en-1e

To play Time's Up!, follow these steps:

**Setup**

1. Divide into teams with members sitting across from each other.[1] (For larger groups, break into 2 or 3 equal teams of 3 or 4 players each, sitting so each person is between players of the other team(s) [2]).

2. Choose a player to keep score.[1]

3. Decide whether to use ORANGE or BLUE names, but do not mix colors within the same game.[1]

4. Build the deck from 40 randomly chosen name cards.[3]

5. Deal 40 cards evenly among all players, then deal two more cards to each player.[1]

6. Each player may look at their cards and discard two of them without revealing them to others.[1]

7. Shuffle all remaining cards and stack them face down in the center to create the "Deck of Fame".[1]

8. Choose a starting team to take the Deck.[1]

9. The next team clockwise from the starting team takes the timer to time the other team's turn.[1]

**Gameplay**

1. The deck is passed clockwise.[2]

2. On a team's turn, one member is the Cluegiver and the rest are the Guessers.[1]

3. The Cluegiver draws the top card from the Deck and looks at the name in the agreed-upon color.[1]

4. The next team says, “Go!” and starts the timer.[1]

5. The Cluegiver gives clues to their teammates using various methods (singing, humming, pointing, charades, or descriptions).[1]

6. **Round 1:** Almost anything goes with clue-giving, but passing is not allowed.[1] The Cluegiver can use as many words as they want, but cannot use any part or variant of the name in the clue.[1][3]

7. **Round 2:** The Cluegiver can use only ONE word per card, but can pass.[3][4] If the Cluegiver uses more than one word, they must set the card aside face down and draw a new one.[4] Each team gets only one guess per card.[4]

8. **Round 3:** The Cluegiver cannot use any words, only sounds and pantomime, but can pass.[3][5] The Guessers get only one guess.[3]

9. **Advanced Play (Optional 4th Round):** The Cluegiver must freeze in a pose and cannot make any sounds.[2] The Guesser starts with eyes closed; the Cluegiver looks at a card, freezes, and shouts "OPEN!" for the Guesser to attempt one guess.[2]

10. If a guess is incorrect, the Cluegiver sets the card aside face down and draws a new one.[5][4]

11. If the Cluegiver passes, they set the card aside face down and draw a new one.[5][4]

12. If the Cluegiver gives an illegal clue, their turn ends immediately and the card is returned to the Deck.[4]

13. If time expires before a name is guessed, players may not discuss the name, and the Cluegiver cannot reveal who they were conveying.[4] The card being worked on is shuffled back into the Deck.[4]

14. A turn ends when the Cluegiver finishes the deck.[5]

15. A round ends when all names in the Deck of Fame have been guessed and the deck is empty.[3][4]

16. At the end of a round, any cards set aside due to passes, goofs, or incorrect guesses are shuffled back into the Deck.[5]

**Scoring and Winning**

1. Each correctly guessed card is placed in a score pile.[4]

2. At the end of a round, the scorekeeper tallies each team's score pile.[5]

3. After scoring, teams read all names from their pile aloud to refresh memories.[4]

4. All cards are shuffled back into the Deck for the next round.[3][4]

5. The team with the highest score after the third round wins.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook · p.2

[2] RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook · p.4

[3] RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook · p.1

[4] RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook · p.3

[5] RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook · p.3

🔧 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 69 ms · ask 8321 ms · total 8392 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8392 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "76 Advanced Play: Advanced Play: Freeze Round! Freeze Round! We’ve added an optional 4th round for even more hilarious fun! Play the same way as Round 3, except the Guesser starts with their eyes closed. The Cluegiver looks at a card and must then freeze in a pose. Once frozen they shout OPEN! and t", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 673}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.048412, "snippet": "32 Divide into teams with team members sitting across from each other. Time’s Up! works best when played in teams of two players each. (See end of rules for larger groups and odd numbers of players.) Choose a player to keep score. Decide whether you’ll be using the ORANGE or the BLUE names. Make sur", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 673}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.044567, "snippet": "1 21st ANNIVERSARY EDITION 60 MINUTES 12+ AGES 3+ PLAYERS Quick Play: Players can always use sound effects and pantomime, but speech becomes more restricted as the game progresses: Each round ends when all names in the Deck of Fame have been guessed. All names are put back into the Deck for the next", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 673}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.042803, "snippet": "54 If the Cluegiver gives an illegal clue, their turn ends immediately and the card they goofed on is returned to the Deck. When time expires, the Cluegiver shuffles the card they were currently working on back into the Deck. Each card that was guessed correctly is put into a score pile near them. P", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 673}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.042196, "snippet": "If the Cluegiver accidentally uses more than one word they must set the card aside face down, draw a new one from the Deck and continue with the new name. Each team may make only 1 guess per card. If the guess is incorrect, the Cluegiver must set that card aside face-down, draw a new one and continu", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 673}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.04207, "snippet": "Developed by: Peter Sarrett Edited by: Frank DiLorenzo, Eric ‘Rico’ Misener & Wei-Hwa Huang Graphics: Jennifer V DiFranco, Brandon Lewis Rules for odd number of players and Advanced Play are courtesy of REPOS Production For information about other R&R Games products and expansion sets, visit us onli", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 673}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Sit so that each person is between players of the other team(s). For example, Diagram 3 shows three teams made of three players each. Diagram 4 shows two teams made of four players each. The deck will be passed around clockwise and when a player has the deck, he gives clues and all of his teammates ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 673}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "T hen think about how to do it while you wait for your next turn. T hat way you’ll be prepared if you draw it again. Round 3 is the most fun, but it can also be the most difficult . Hard names can be made much easier if gestures are incorporated into 1st and 2nd round clues. If you hold your hands l", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 673}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 673}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 673}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 673}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 673}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 673}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 673 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 673 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 0.87625 of 2699 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 06:17

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	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.4	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
#2	RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.2	0.048412 (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 Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.1	0.044567 (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 Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.3	0.042803 (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 Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.3	0.042196 (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 Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.13	0.04207 (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 Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.4	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
#8	RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.3	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 49 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	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.2	#2	0.048412 (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 Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.1	#3	0.044567 (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 Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.4	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.3	#5	0.042196 (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 Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.13	#6	0.04207 (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 Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.3	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.3	#4	0.042803 (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 Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.4	#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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.1	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.3	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Time's Up! — Rulebook (corpus doc 673)	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 69 ms · first delta 2668 ms · total 8392 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 69 ms · ask 8321 ms · gateway work 8392 ms · total 8392 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3446
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 913
tok/sec: 160.9 tok/sec — 913 output tokens in 5.675 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 38s 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 606), 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.