Ruling — Time's Up! Title Recall!

← Time's Up! Title Recall!

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Time's Up! Title Recall!bg-36553-en-1e

**Setup**

1. Divide into teams with members sitting across from each other.[1]

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

3. Decide whether to use YELLOW or BLUE titles, ensuring no colors are mixed in the same game.[1]

4. Deal 40 cards evenly among all players (or more for a longer game).[1]

5. Each player may look at their cards and discard two (without revealing them to others).[1]

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

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

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

**Gameplay**

1. On each team's turn, one member is the Cluegiver and the rest are the Guessers (the Cluegiver changes on successive turns).[1]

2. The Cluegiver draws the top card from the Deck and looks at the agreed-upon title color.[1]

3. Once the Cluegiver has looked at the title, the next team says, "Go!" and starts the timer.[1]

4. The Cluegiver gives clues to the teammates.[1]

5. **Round 1:** Almost anything goes with cluegiving, but passing is not allowed.[1] The Cluegiver can use sounds, pointing, charades, or full descriptions.[1]

6. **Round 2:** The Cluegiver may use no more than one word per card.[2] The Cluegiver can use the same word repeatedly, but once a word is used, only non-verbal clues can be added.[2] Each team may make only one guess per card.[2] If the guess is incorrect, the Cluegiver sets the card aside face-down and draws a new one.[2] The Cluegiver may pass by saying "Pass" and drawing a new card.[2]

7. **Round 3:** The Cluegiver may not use any words at all, using only sounds and pantomime.[3] There is only one guess allowed.[3] Passing is allowed.[3]

8. **Optional 4th Round (Poser Round):** The Guesser starts with eyes closed.[4] The Cluegiver looks at a card and freezes in a pose, then shouts "OPEN!".[4] The Guesser opens their eyes and makes one guess.[4] The Cluegiver then shouts "CLOSE!" and the Guesser closes their eyes while the Cluegiver moves to the next card.[4] During this round, the Cluegiver cannot make any sounds.[4]

9. **Cluegiving Restrictions:** No singing or humming is allowed.[5] No part or variant of the title can be used (e.g., you cannot use "Willy" to get the guesser to say "William").[5] "Rhymes with" clues are allowed if the Cluegiver does not say the rhyming word.[5] Spelling the title or giving clues designed to give away specific letters is forbidden (except for titles using initials like "E.T.").[5]

10. **Guessing Rules:** Guessers must say the full title as printed on the card (words in parentheses are optional).[5] There is no penalty for wrong guesses.[5]

11. **Turn Ending:** A turn ends if the Cluegiver finishes the deck, if time expires, or if the Cluegiver gives an illegal clue.[3][5][2] If time expires, the Cluegiver shuffles the current card back into the Deck.[5] If a clue is illegal, the card is returned to the Deck.[5]

12. **Passing the Turn:** Pass the Deck to the next team clockwise, and that team passes the timer to the next team clockwise.[5]

**Scoring and Winning**

1. A round ends when all titles in the Deck of Fame have been guessed and the deck is empty.[2]

2. If the deck runs out, pause the timer by placing it on its side.[2]

3. The current team starts the next round using remaining time; if there is not enough time, they may pass to the next team, who starts with a reset 30-second timer.[2]

4. At the end of a round, any cards set aside due to passes, incorrect guesses, or clue goofs are shuffled back into the Deck.[2]

5. Each team adds up all the cards they collected, earning 1 point for each card.[2]

6. The team with the highest score after all three rounds is the winner.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook · p.2 · SETUP · HOW TO PLAY

[2] RULEBOOK Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook · p.3 · The only restrictions are:

[3] RULEBOOK Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook · p.3 · The only restrictions are:

[4] RULEBOOK Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook · p.3 · ADVANCED PLAY - POSER ROUND

[5] RULEBOOK Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook · p.2 · The only restrictions are:

One rule clearer, zero feelings hurt.

🔧 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 199 ms · ask 9774 ms · total 9975 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 9975 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Do not make teams, but instead play as individuals. On your turn with the deck, you will be the Cluegiver to the person on your left. When your time is up, pass the Deck to the person who is to the left of your Guesser. This way when the deck reaches the person to your right, you will be their Guess", "headingPath": "With an odd number of players, you can play Time's UP! slightly differently. · RULES FOR teams with 3+ PLAYERS Each · KEY TO TIMES UP! ® TITLE RECALL GAME CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 649}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "Divide into teams with team members sitting across from each other. Time's Up! works best when played in teams of two players each. (Three teams of two, for example, is better than two teams of three.) With more than ten players, larger teams will be necessary. (See end of rules for odd number of pl", "headingPath": "SETUP · HOW TO PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 649}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "CONTENTS: 432 Cards, 30 second timer and score pad OBJECT: To score the most points by collecting title cards in 3 separate rounds. Quickplay: A game is played using a set of randomly chosen cards. Each team gets 30 seconds to guess as many titles as possible, with one player giving clues to his tea", "headingPath": "IN ROUND 1- · IN ROUND 2- · IN ROUND 3-", "sharpsignalDocId": 649}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "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 the Guesser opens their eyes and must give one Guess. The Clue", "headingPath": "ADVANCED PLAY - POSER ROUND", "sharpsignalDocId": 649}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "The round ends when all titles have been guessed and the Deck is empty. When the deck runs out and all titles have been guessed, pause the timer by placing it on its' side. The current team will take the first turn in the next round, using only the remaining time on the timer. If they feel there is ", "headingPath": "The only restrictions are:", "sharpsignalDocId": 649}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045455, "snippet": "If a Cluegiver finshes the deck during thier turn, their turn is over. They are not allowed to revisit cards that they set aside due to incorrect guesses, passes, etc. At the end of the round, don't bother reading all the titles aloud again; everyone should know them by now. Shuffle all the cards ba", "headingPath": "The only restrictions are:", "sharpsignalDocId": 649}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "No singing or humming of music is allowed. No part or variant of the title can be used in the clue. Ex: You can't use 'Willy' or 'Bill' to get the Guesser to say WILLIAM. 'Rhymes with' clues are acceptable, provided the Cluegiver doesn't actually say the rhyming word. Ex: 'Sounds like the animal tha", "headingPath": "The only restrictions are:", "sharpsignalDocId": 649}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Wear your Smartypants loud and proud in this trivia game with a twist! Each category has several correct answers. Can you name them all? Last place wins the game! The game that pits famous people and characters in a brackettournament battle. Choose a challenge, place your bets, get your picks to win", "headingPath": "SMARTY PARTY ® · ULTIMATE SHOWDOWN ™", "sharpsignalDocId": 649}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP · HOW TO PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 649}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The only restrictions are:", "sharpsignalDocId": 649}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The only restrictions are:", "sharpsignalDocId": 649}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ADVANCED PLAY - POSER ROUND", "sharpsignalDocId": 649}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The only restrictions are:", "sharpsignalDocId": 649}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 649 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 649 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 0.88119 of 3089 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 24, 2026 09:14 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 Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	With an odd number of players, you can play Time's UP! slightly differently. · RULES FOR teams with 3+ PLAYERS Each · KEY TO TIMES UP! ® TITLE RECALL GAME CARDS	p.4	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	SETUP · HOW TO PLAY	p.2	0.048387 (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! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	IN ROUND 1- · IN ROUND 2- · IN ROUND 3-	p.1	0.047131 (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! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	ADVANCED PLAY - POSER ROUND	p.3	0.046875 (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! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	The only restrictions are:	p.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))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	The only restrictions are:	p.3	0.045455 (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! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	The only restrictions are:	p.2	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
#8	RULEBOOK Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	SMARTY PARTY ® · ULTIMATE SHOWDOWN ™	p.5	0.029412 (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 8 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 Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	SETUP · HOW TO PLAY	p.2	#2	0.048387 (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! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	ADVANCED PLAY - POSER ROUND	p.3	#4	0.046875 (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! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	The only restrictions are:	p.3	#6	0.045455 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	SMARTY PARTY ® · ULTIMATE SHOWDOWN ™	p.5	#8	0.029412 (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 Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	The only restrictions are:	p.2	#7	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
#6	RULEBOOK Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	The only restrictions are:	p.3	#5	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
#7	RULEBOOK Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	IN ROUND 1- · IN ROUND 2- · IN ROUND 3-	p.1	#3	0.047131 (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! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	With an odd number of players, you can play Time's UP! slightly differently. · RULES FOR teams with 3+ PLAYERS Each · KEY TO TIMES UP! ® TITLE RECALL GAME CARDS	p.4	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	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 Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	SETUP · HOW TO PLAY	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	The only restrictions are:	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	The only restrictions are:	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	ADVANCED PLAY - POSER ROUND	p.3	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Time's Up! Title Recall! — Rulebook (corpus doc 649)	The only restrictions are:	p.2	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 199 ms · first delta n/a · total 9975 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 199 ms · ask 9774 ms · gateway work 9975 ms · total 9975 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2760
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1007
tok/sec: 129.6 tok/sec — 1007 output tokens in 7.773 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 20s 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 7s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
stream path: requested, but the gateway emitted no delta — the whole answer arrived at once (the child's stream flag off, or a non-streaming backend)
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 582), 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.