Ruling — Cryptid

← Cryptid

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Cryptidbg-246784-en-1e

### Setup

1. Decide whether to play a normal or advanced game.[1]

2. Shuffle the cards of the chosen type and draw a single card for the table.[1]

3. Use the top side of the card to set up map tiles and place structures in the indicated order and rotation.[1]

4. Flip the card over and check the leftmost column for the correct number of players.[1]

5. Each player in turn order takes one clue book matching the columns of the numbers in that row.[1]

6. Identify your clue by matching the number in that clue book.[1]

7. Keep your clue hidden from other players.[1]

8. Choose a starting player (suggested to be whoever sets up the map) and give a set of playing pieces to each player.[2]

9. Begin the game with initial sharing: the starting player places a cube in a space that could not be the habitat according to their clue.[1][3]

10. The player to the left does the same, continuing clockwise until all players have placed two cubes.[1][3]

### Playing the Game

1. The starting player takes the first turn.[1][3]

2. On your turn, you must choose one of two actions: [1][3]

* **Question:** Pick any space and ask another player if the creature could be there.[4][3] The player questioned must say if it could be the habitat according to their clue and place either a disc (could be) or a cube (could not be) of their color on that space.[4][3] If they place a cube, you must also place one of your cubes on a different space that cannot be the habitat according to your clue.[4][3]

* **Search:** Pick one space that could be the habitat according to your clue and declare a search.[4][3] Place one of your own discs on that space.[4] Moving clockwise, ask every player if the creature could be there according to their clue; they must place a cube or disc accordingly, unless one of their discs is already on the space, in which case they pass their turn.[4] If someone places a cube, the search stops and you must place a cube on a different space that cannot be the habitat according to your clue.[4][3]

3. The turn passes to the player on your left, unless you have correctly discovered the habitat.[1]

### Core Principles

1. You must be honest when placing pieces on the map.[5][6]

2. Pieces are never removed from the board (unless a mistake was made).[5][6][7]

3. You cannot interact with, question, search, or place any pieces on a space that contains a cube.[5][3]

4. If you make someone place a cube on your turn, you must also place one of your cubes somewhere on the board.[5][3]

5. You cannot add a piece to a space if one of your pieces is already there.[5][3]

### Winning the Game

1. The only way to win is to search on the space which contains the habitat.[1]

2. You win a search if you question every player clockwise and nobody places a cube.[4][3]

[1] RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook · p.5 · USING THE CLUE BOOKS · PLAYING THE GAME

[2] RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook · p.4 · SETUP · USING THE COMPANION APP · www.playcryptid.com

[3] RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook · p.12 · SETUP · TURNS · QUESTION · SEARCH · CORE PRINCIPLES · QUICK REFERENCE RULES

[4] RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook · p.6 · QUESTIONING · SEARCHING

[5] RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook · p.5 · CORE PRINCIPLES

[6] RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook · p.6 · ON HONESTY

[7] RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook · p.3 · THE MAP · ANIMAL TERRITORY · STRUCTURES · PLAYING PIECES · CLUE BOOKS AND CARDS

🔧 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 83 ms · ask 6999 ms · total 7085 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 7085 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Once you've decided which type of game you want to play (normal or advanced), shuffle the cards of that type and draw a single card for the table. The top side of the card will indicate the order and rotation in which to set up the map tiles, and the spaces on which to place the structures. Once thi", "headingPath": "USING THE CLUE BOOKS · PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 414}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "Cryptid can be played in normal or advanced mode. Normal mode is the best way to get new players familiar with the game and clues, while also being more suitable for younger players. There are only two differences in advanced mode: Players may receive negative as well as positive clues, so some clue", "headingPath": "SETUP · USING THE COMPANION APP · www.playcryptid.com", "sharpsignalDocId": 414}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "If players are badly stuck, it's possible to get a hint. This must be agreed by all players at the table, or by all bar one if playing with four or five players. If using the cards, check the number on your card, and find it in the Hints section in the back of this rulebook. If using the app, just f", "headingPath": "GETTING A HINT · HELPFUL TIPS · CLUES", "sharpsignalDocId": 414}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045037, "snippet": "The map is the area where your search will be taking place, and serves as the focus of the game. It consists of six numbered map tiles, divided into hexagonal spaces. There are five different types of space: desert, forest, water, mountain, and swamp. One corner of each tile shows a number, which is", "headingPath": "THE MAP · ANIMAL TERRITORY · STRUCTURES · PLAYING PIECES · CLUE BOOKS AND CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 414}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Set up the board and assign clues using the app, or the cards and clue books. Begin the game with the initial sharing: the starting player must place a cube in a space on the board which could not be the habitat, according to their clue. The player on their left will then do the same, and this conti", "headingPath": "SETUP · TURNS · QUESTION · SEARCH · CORE PRINCIPLES · QUICK REFERENCE RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 414}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "To question, place the pawn on a space on the map, and ask any other player 'Could the creature be here?' You can choose any space to question, even one which you know could not be the habitat. In fact, this is often a good way to throw people off the scent of your own clue! The player you questione", "headingPath": "QUESTIONING · SEARCHING", "sharpsignalDocId": 414}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Cryptid allows room for misdirection, but the game is completely dependent on all players placing cubes and discs honestly. If that doesn't sound like your gaming group, then this might not be the game for you. Mistakes are rare, but do happen from time to time. If a player realises they have made a", "headingPath": "ON HONESTY", "sharpsignalDocId": 414}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Whether you choose to question or search, you must obey these core principles of the game: You must be honest in placing your pieces on the map. Pieces are never removed from the board. You may never interact with a space that contains any cube. This means that you cannot question, search, or place ", "headingPath": "CORE PRINCIPLES", "sharpsignalDocId": 414}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "USING THE CLUE BOOKS · PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 414}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP · USING THE COMPANION APP · www.playcryptid.com", "sharpsignalDocId": 414}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP · TURNS · QUESTION · SEARCH · CORE PRINCIPLES · QUICK REFERENCE RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 414}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "QUESTIONING · SEARCHING", "sharpsignalDocId": 414}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CORE PRINCIPLES", "sharpsignalDocId": 414}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ON HONESTY", "sharpsignalDocId": 414}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE MAP · ANIMAL TERRITORY · STRUCTURES · PLAYING PIECES · CLUE BOOKS AND CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 414}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 414 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 414 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 0.89272 of 2265 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 06:31

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 Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	USING THE CLUE BOOKS · PLAYING THE GAME	p.5	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 Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	SETUP · USING THE COMPANION APP · www.playcryptid.com	p.4	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
#3	RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	GETTING A HINT · HELPFUL TIPS · CLUES	p.7	0.046642 (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 Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	THE MAP · ANIMAL TERRITORY · STRUCTURES · PLAYING PIECES · CLUE BOOKS AND CARDS	p.3	0.045037 (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 Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	SETUP · TURNS · QUESTION · SEARCH · CORE PRINCIPLES · QUICK REFERENCE RULES	p.12	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 Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	QUESTIONING · SEARCHING	p.6	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 Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	ON HONESTY	p.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))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	CORE PRINCIPLES	p.5	0.029851 (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 14 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 Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	USING THE CLUE BOOKS · PLAYING THE GAME	p.5	#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 Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	SETUP · USING THE COMPANION APP · www.playcryptid.com	p.4	#2	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
#3	RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	CORE PRINCIPLES	p.5	#8	0.029851 (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 Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	ON HONESTY	p.6	#7	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 Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	THE MAP · ANIMAL TERRITORY · STRUCTURES · PLAYING PIECES · CLUE BOOKS AND CARDS	p.3	#4	0.045037 (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 Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	QUESTIONING · SEARCHING	p.6	#6	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
#7	RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	GETTING A HINT · HELPFUL TIPS · CLUES	p.7	#3	0.046642 (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 Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	SETUP · TURNS · QUESTION · SEARCH · CORE PRINCIPLES · QUICK REFERENCE RULES	p.12	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	USING THE CLUE BOOKS · PLAYING THE GAME	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	SETUP · USING THE COMPANION APP · www.playcryptid.com	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	SETUP · TURNS · QUESTION · SEARCH · CORE PRINCIPLES · QUICK REFERENCE RULES	p.12	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	QUESTIONING · SEARCHING	p.6	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	CORE PRINCIPLES	p.5	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	ON HONESTY	p.6	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Cryptid — Rulebook (corpus doc 414)	THE MAP · ANIMAL TERRITORY · STRUCTURES · PLAYING PIECES · CLUE BOOKS AND CARDS	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 83 ms · first delta 1648 ms · total 7085 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 83 ms · ask 6999 ms · gateway work 7085 ms · total 7085 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3358
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 708
tok/sec: 131.5 tok/sec — 708 output tokens in 5.385 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 17s 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 343), 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.