Ruling — Critter Kitchen

← Critter Kitchen

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Critter Kitchenbg-393429-en-1e

To set up the game, follow these steps:

**General Setup**

1. Nominate a player to be maître d' and give them the Maître d' Card.[1]

2. Put all Ingredient, Spice, and Rumor Tokens (oblong shape) into the bag and shake it.[1]

3. Place the Waterfront Board in the middle of the table.[1]

4. Place the Round Tracker on round 1 of the round track.[1]

5. Place the Hold Token on round 3.[1]

6. Place one of the Allspice 7th-Round Tokens on round 7.[1]

7. Separately shuffle the Challenge, Critic, and Rumor Cards, and fill the slots along the top of the board from left to right with 6 challenges (face down), 1 critic (face up), and 3 rumors (face down).[1]

8. Find the 5 Location Boards with a number on the back; return boards with a number higher than your player count to the box and lay the remaining boards in a row in numbered order from left to right, flipping them face up.[1]

9. Place the Soup Truck at the left end of the row, pile the Soup Tokens on the truck in the indicated spot, and place the Bisque Tokens next to the Soup Truck.[1]

10. Place the Midnight Merchant and Chef Academy (in that order) on the right end of the row (use the side marked '2' for a 2-player game, otherwise use the other side).[1]

11. Shuffle the Zous-chef Cards and place them in a face-down deck on the Chef Academy, and gather all Zous-chef Tokens nearby.[1]

12. Pile all Star Tokens to the side.[1]

**Player Setup**

1. Pick a color and take the Restaurant Shield, Kitchen Board, Chef Hat, and 3 Chef Figures (mouse, lizard, and boar) in your color.[2]

2. Set up your shield to create hidden storage next to your Kitchen Board so everyone can see your kitchen.[2]

3. Place your Kitchen Board with its score side face down and place your chefs on your kitchen.[2]

4. Take the 9 Location Cards of your color; keep the cards matching the locations used in the game and return the remaining cards (including the Break Time Card) to the box.[3][2]

5. Place a Critic Plate and 3 Challenge Plates anywhere in your player area (these may be hidden behind your shield).[3][2]

6. Take 1 soup and hide it behind your shield.[3][2]

7. Mix your Chef Hat in with the other players' hats and line them up in a random order on the priority track of the Waterfront Board.[3][2]

8. (Optional) Deal each player 2 Restaurateur Cards; players pick one to display face up next to their kitchen and return the other to the box.[2]

**McDogald's Setup (if applicable)**

1. Follow the normal setup as if for a 2-player game.[4]

2. Find the appropriate Critic's Choice Card for the revealed critic and place it beside the critic.[4]

3. Give McDogald's the amount of stars showing next to the critic, then flip to the ingredients side.[4]

4. Place the McDogald's Kitchen Board within easy reach, kitchen side face-up.[4]

5. Place 3 Chef Figures and the Critic Plate of an unused player color on the McDogald's Kitchen Board.[4]

6. Separately shuffle the Manager, Mouse, Lizard, and Boar Decks and put them face down in that order within easy reach.[4]

7. Place a Chef Hat matching the McDogald's chef color at the front of the priority track.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Critter Kitchen — Rulebook · p.4 · Game Setup Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Critter Kitchen — Rulebook · p.5

[3] RULEBOOK Critter Kitchen — Rulebook · p.5 · Game Setup Setup

[4] RULEBOOK Critter Kitchen — Rulebook · p.19 · Restaurateurs (Optional) · Bonus Scoring · Solo Mode · Critic Card · Player Setup

The table has its answer — dice up.

🔧 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 91 ms · ask 6513 ms · total 6606 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6606 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "Location Cards: Take the 9 Location Cards of your color. Create your hand by keeping the cards matching the locations used in the game and return the remaining cards (including the Break Time Card) to the box. 2 3 Plates: Place a Critic Plate and 3 Challenge Plates anywhere in your player area. Thes", "headingPath": "Game Setup Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 770}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "5 5SetupSetup Player SetupPlayer Setup Each player takes the following steps to set up: Components: Pick a color and take the Restaurant Shield, Kitchen Board, Chef Hat, and 3 Chef Figures (mouse, lizard, and boar) in your color. Set up your shield to create your hidden storage next to your Kitchen ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 770}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047875, "snippet": "Maître d': Nominate a player to be maître d' and give them the Maître d' Card. They will be responsible for guiding players through setup at the beginning of each round. 1 2 Token Bag: Put all Ingredient, Spice, and Rumor Tokens (oblong shape) into the bag and shake it. 3 Waterfront: Place the Water", "headingPath": "Game Setup Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 770}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.045805, "snippet": "You are the executive chef, known for the special touch you add to every meal. Restaurateurs provide each player with a special ability they may utilize in the game. Restaurateurs: After the game is set up and ready to play, deal each player 2 Restaurateur Cards. Players pick one and display it face", "headingPath": "Restaurateurs (Optional) · Bonus Scoring · Solo Mode · Critic Card · Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 770}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "To win, your restaurant needs to earn more stars than McDogald's. While you follow the same steps as in the multiplayer game, McDogald's plays by their own rules. Follow the same steps as in the multiplayer game, with the following differences: Each round, place your chefs directly on their location", "headingPath": "Goal · Gameplay · Step 2: Planning · Step 3: Running · McDogald's Placement", "sharpsignalDocId": 770}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "7 GameplayGameplay Step 1:Step 1: Start of RoundStart of Round At the start of each round, the various vendors of Bistro Bay must prepare for the day’s clientele. The maître d’ can guide everyone through this process by following the Maître d’ Card. Restock bisque: If the bisque space on the Soup Tr", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 770}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The game takes place over 7 rounds, divided into 3 days. Each round has 5 steps: At the start of each round, the various vendors of Bistro Bay must prepare for the day's clientele. The maître d' can guide everyone through this process by following the Maître d' Card. Restock bisque: If the bisque sp", "headingPath": "Gameplay · Step 1: Start of Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 770}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Once you've seen what Bistro Bay has to offer, it's time to plan where to send your chefs this round. Each player simultaneously gives secret instructions to their chefs by placing Location Cards face down above their Kitchen Board. You must place 1 Location Card face down in each of your 3 card slo", "headingPath": "Step 2: Planning · Step 3: Running · CARRYING CAPACITY · Example: · ZOUS-CHEF INSTRUCTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 770}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 770}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 770}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 770}, {"page": 19, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Restaurateurs (Optional) · Bonus Scoring · Solo Mode · Critic Card · Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 770}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 770 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 770 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 0.89294 of 2550 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 16, 2026 23:54 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 Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)	Game Setup Setup	p.5	0.04866 (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 Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)		p.5	0.047883 (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 Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)	Game Setup Setup	p.4	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 Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)	Restaurateurs (Optional) · Bonus Scoring · Solo Mode · Critic Card · Player Setup	p.19	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
#5	RULEBOOK Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)	Goal · Gameplay · Step 2: Planning · Step 3: Running · McDogald's Placement	p.20	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
#6	RULEBOOK Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)		p.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))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)	Gameplay · Step 1: Start of Round	p.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))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)	Step 2: Planning · Step 3: Running · CARRYING CAPACITY · Example: · ZOUS-CHEF INSTRUCTIONS	p.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))	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 39 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 Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)	Game Setup Setup	p.5	#1	0.04866 (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 Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)		p.5	#2	0.047883 (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 Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)	Gameplay · Step 1: Start of Round	p.7	#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
#4	RULEBOOK Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)		p.7	#6	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
#5	RULEBOOK Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)	Step 4: Shopping · Step 5: End of Round · Ingredients and Spice · Allspice · Challenge Ingredient · Example · …	p.21	#10	0.014286 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)	Goal · Gameplay · Step 2: Planning · Step 3: Running · McDogald's Placement	p.20	#5	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 Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)	Restaurateurs (Optional) · Bonus Scoring · Solo Mode · Critic Card · Player Setup	p.19	#4	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 Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)	Game Setup Setup	p.4	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)	Game Setup Setup	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)		p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)	Game Setup Setup	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Critter Kitchen — Rulebook (corpus doc 770)	Restaurateurs (Optional) · Bonus Scoring · Solo Mode · Critic Card · Player Setup	p.19	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 91 ms · first delta 2491 ms · total 6606 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 6513 ms · gateway work 6606 ms · total 6606 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3364
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 836
tok/sec: 205.4 tok/sec — 836 output tokens in 4.070 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 16s ago)
gateway schema (read from the running child): schema head 0042_definer_search_path (live revision not readable by this principal)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 60h, checked 4s 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: 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): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 704), 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.