Ruling — EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express

← EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Expressbg-226522-en-1e

1. Read the rulebook together out loud and carefully follow all of its instructions.[1]

2. Prepare the book and the decoder disk on the table.[2]

3. Leave the 'strange items' and 'sealed sheets' untouched in the box.[3][2]

4. Sort the Riddle Cards, Answer Cards, and Help Cards into three piles.[2]

5. Ensure Riddle Cards and Answer Cards are arranged in ascending order according to their letters or numbers.[2]

6. Sort the Help Cards by their symbols and place them on the side of the table, stacking them so the '1st CLUE' card is on top of the '2nd CLUE' card, which is on top of the 'SOLUTION' card (with the exception of the five help cards with the specific symbol).[2]

7. Start a stopwatch.[4][5]

8. Look at all the pages of the book.[3][5]

9. Find objects in the book or on Riddle Cards that are marked with a symbol.[6]

10. Figure out the three-digit key code for the locked object.[3]

11. Enter the code under the corresponding symbol on the decoder disk.[3]

12. Look through the viewing window on the smallest wheel to see a number.[3]

13. Use that number to pull the corresponding Answer Card from the pile and look at it.[3][7]

14. If the code is correct, the Answer Card will tell you how to continue.[6][8][7]

15. If the code is incorrect, you must keep searching for a solution or switch to another riddle for the time being.[6][7]

16. If you are stuck, you may use Help Cards that correspond to the symbol of the riddle.[4][8]

17. After using a Help Card, place it on a discard pile.[4]

18. Return all Answer Cards to the Answer Card pile after you are done with them.[8]

19. The game ends when you have solved the last riddle and solved the murder, as indicated by a card.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook · p.1 · What's the game about?

[2] RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook · p.2 · What's the game about? · Game materials · Game setup

[3] RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook · p.3 · Where is the game board? · Example: · Course of play

[4] RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook · p.6 · Need some help? · Additional game materials · When does the game end?

[5] RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook · p.7 · When does the game end? · One final tip · The game begins

[6] RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook · p.4 · Course of play · Is the code incorrect?

[7] RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook · p.4

[8] RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook · p.5 · Is the code incorrect? · Is the code really correct? If so, the Answer Card will tell you how to continue. You will find one or 30 18 · Need some help?

Settled. Play on.

🔧 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 77 ms · ask 3511 ms · total 3589 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 3589 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "IMPORTANT: Do not look closely at any of the game materials before starting the game! Do not leaf through the book yet, and do not look at the front of the cards yet. Wait until 'the game' tells you to. 86 Cards 24 Riddle Cards 30 Answer Cards 32 Help Cards 2 Strange items 3 Sealed sheets 1 Book 1 D", "headingPath": "What's the game about? · Game materials · Game setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "This game has no game board! You will have to figure out for yourselves what you have to find in the game and what the setting looks like. At the beginning of the game, you will have only the book and the decoder disk available to you. As the game continues, you will add the Riddle Cards -either to ", "headingPath": "Where is the game board? · Example: · Course of play", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "This number indicates the number of the Answer Card that you are then allowed to look at. If the code is incorrect, you will have to keep searching for a solution or switch to another riddle for the time being. If the code is correct, the Answer Card will tell you how to continue. If so, the Answer ", "headingPath": "Course of play · Is the code incorrect?", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "IMPORTANT: Always take the Help Cards for a specific Riddle Card or riddle in the book. These riddles are usually identified with a symbol (matching a symbol on the decoder disk). It won't help you to use Help Cards if you have not found a riddle with the corresponding symbol. So have a little patie", "headingPath": "Need some help? · Additional game materials · When does the game end?", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "| | No Help Cards | 1-2 Help Cards | 3-5 Help Cards | 6-10 Help Cards | > 10 Help Cards | | < 60 Min. | 10 stars | 8 stars | 7 stars | 5 stars | 4 stars | | < 90 Min. | 9 stars | 7 stars | 6 stars | 4 stars | 3 stars | | < 120 Min. | 8 stars | 6 stars | 5 stars | 3 stars | 2 stars | | > 120 Min. | 7", "headingPath": "When does the game end? · One final tip · The game begins", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "For 1-4 players, ages 12 and up CAUTION: Do not look at the game materials (cards, book, etc.) yet! First, read this rulebook together out loud and carefully follow all of its instructions. The year is 1905. You are on your way from Paris to Constantinople on the luxurious Orient Express. One mornin", "headingPath": "What's the game about?", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The code may be right. Where do you see the code symbol? To continue with this example scenario: Next, you will take a look at the Answer Card next to the kitchen door and see that you should now retrieve Answer Card 26 from the pile. Answer Card 10 NOTE: You have to see the object with the symbol o", "headingPath": "Is the code incorrect? · Is the code really correct? If so, the Answer Card will tell you how to continue. You will find one or 30 18 · Need some help?", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "on in Did they succeed in solving the murder case correctly? Yes (+2 stars) No To do it, it took and They used a total of Help Cards. This earned them stars in the assessment! The coolest riddle was The trickiest riddle was The player who solved this riddle was 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Minutes Second", "headingPath": "The Authors:", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "What's the game about?", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "What's the game about? · Game materials · Game setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Where is the game board? · Example: · Course of play", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Need some help? · Additional game materials · When does the game end?", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "When does the game end? · One final tip · The game begins", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Course of play · Is the code incorrect?", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Is the code incorrect? · Is the code really correct? If so, the Answer Card will tell you how to continue. You will find one or 30 18 · Need some help?", "sharpsignalDocId": 596}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 596 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 596 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 0.87617 of 1389 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 25, 2026 19:54 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 EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	What's the game about? · Game materials · Game setup	p.2	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	Where is the game board? · Example: · Course of play	p.3	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 EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	Course of play · Is the code incorrect?	p.4	0.047619 (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 EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	Need some help? · Additional game materials · When does the game end?	p.6	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 EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	When does the game end? · One final tip · The game begins	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
#6	RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	What's the game about?	p.1	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
#7	RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	Is the code incorrect? · Is the code really correct? If so, the Answer Card will tell you how to continue. You will find one or 30 18 · Need some help?	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
#8	RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	The Authors:	p.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))	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 10 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 EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	Where is the game board? · Example: · Course of play	p.3	#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 EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	Course of play · Is the code incorrect?	p.4	#3	0.047619 (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 EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	Need some help? · Additional game materials · When does the game end?	p.6	#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
#4	RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	Is the code incorrect? · Is the code really correct? If so, the Answer Card will tell you how to continue. You will find one or 30 18 · Need some help?	p.5	#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
#5	RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)		p.4	#9	0.014493 (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 EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	When does the game end? · One final tip · The game begins	p.7	#5	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 EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	What's the game about?	p.1	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	What's the game about? · Game materials · Game setup	p.2	#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 EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	What's the game about?	p.1	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	What's the game about? · Game materials · Game setup	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	Where is the game board? · Example: · Course of play	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	Need some help? · Additional game materials · When does the game end?	p.6	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	When does the game end? · One final tip · The game begins	p.7	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	Course of play · Is the code incorrect?	p.4	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)		p.4	no quote on the wire
[8]	RULEBOOK EXIT: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express — Rulebook (corpus doc 596)	Is the code incorrect? · Is the code really correct? If so, the Answer Card will tell you how to continue. You will find one or 30 18 · Need some help?	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 77 ms · first delta 1223 ms · total 3589 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 77 ms · ask 3511 ms · gateway work 3589 ms · total 3589 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3142
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 463
tok/sec: 201.1 tok/sec — 463 output tokens in 2.302 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 55s 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 1s 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: 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 528), 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.