Sort Of

Executive Summary

Sort Of is a card-sorting game about the places our instincts lead us. Browse Science, Geography, Quotes & Beliefs, Internet Culture, Music, Language, or Everyday Life, then choose a deck. The library contains seventeen decks and 305 cards: Subscriptions, Dialect, Jargon Year, Which Rulebook?, You Live Where?, Scripture or Speech?, When Did This Blow Up?, Classic Rock Epics, You Measure What?, The Government Said WHAT? — Uncensored, You Published WHAT? — PG, You Published WHAT? — Uncensored (Mature), Medicine, Placebo, or Snake Oil?, Bug, Feature, or Exploit?, Programming Language, Medication, or IKEA Product?, Law, Policy, or Everybody Just Thinks So?, and AI, Automation, or Just Software? The government deck contains strong adult language; the mature academic deck also includes explicit sexual language, bodily functions, alcohol and drugs. Mike Besso created the game with Renaissance Solutions.

Each deck contains 15, 20, or 25 cards in three to five sprints of five, with an explanation, a caveat, and sources on every back. Some cards fit more than one category. Pick a category that fits.

Before You Play

Choose a category, set your options above the gallery, then click a deck to play. At your pace is the default: no countdown, and you choose when to move to the next card. Autoplay advances questions after an answer or timeout; revealed backs wait for you in both modes. Autoplay starts with a 15-second countdown. The optional timer offers None, 5, 10, 15, 30, and 60 seconds. Your settings stay fixed through all sprints and replays.

Learn as You Go reveals every accepted category after each response. Keep Me Guessing holds back answers, explanations, and score changes until all five responses in the sprint are recorded, then reveals the cards one at a time.

Preview the sprint's categories, then start when ready. Select one category or pass. Any accepted answer earns one point; an incorrect answer loses one point; a pass or timeout scores zero. There is no speed bonus and no extra point for overlap. Use Pause to keep the remaining time, then Resume when ready. Rotating the screen or leaving the tab pauses timed cards until you resume. An answer at or after the deadline counts as a timeout.

You control reading time between cards and sprints. Revealed cards remain available for review. Replaying a sprint replaces its contribution to your total and keeps earlier played cards available. Returning to decks asks for confirmation before ending a run, while retaining your selected category, pace, reveal mode, and timer for this page session. Reloading restores defaults; a browser warning protects a run with progress.

Choose Explore for untimed browsing without scoring. Flip any card and move forward or back at your pace.

Controls and Accessibility

• Use labeled buttons with a mouse, touch, Enter, or Space. Tab moves through controls, and keyboard focus remains visible.
• During a card, use number keys 1–4 for the displayed categories and Space to pass. Category labels remain visible beside their shortcuts.
• Safari may use Option+Tab to reach all page controls, depending on its keyboard settings. See Apple’s keyboard navigation guide.
• In Explore and card review, use the arrow keys to move between available cards and F to flip. Labeled on-screen buttons provide the same actions.
• Outcomes use words as well as color. Card backs show every accepted category, your response and result when applicable, an explanation, and a caveat.
• The layout supports narrow screens and reduced-motion preferences. Choose None for untimed scored play or Explore for browsing without scores.
• Screen-reader usability and the game's feel still need human evaluation.

How We Made This with Generative AI

Mike supplied the original proposal and clarified the architecture: follow the other RS games, keep each deck in a JSON file, and let the player choose a deck on the game page. He then specified adjustable timing, multiple accepted answers, category-first browsing, and six new deck families. Generative AI helped develop the shared engine, interface, content, and verification checks. The original proposal is retained with a byte count and SHA-256 hash; the accepted design and expansion record preserve the later instructions.

Mike and Renaissance Solutions remain responsible for content, educational framing, and approval. Physics cards identify the effect being explained and discuss overlapping frameworks. Place names carry location and etymology caveats. Scripture cards identify passages and translations and accept supported overlaps. Meme cards distinguish broad breakout from creation or revival. Music clues use brief excerpts with recording and writer credits. Measurement cards specify regional and historical meanings. The original three decks retain their accepted answers. Mike approved the nine-deck expanded edition for local main integration and GitHub publication on September 15, 2026. He approved the tenth deck, The Government Said WHAT? — Uncensored, on September 23, 2026. Deployment will follow when the other subsites are ready.

The Gory Details

One TypeScript application bundles seventeen local JSON decks through Vite. JSON is the content authority. A separate library registry defines browsing categories and display order. Decks can belong to several library categories, independently of their sprint answer categories. Validation rejects empty, duplicate, or unavailable accepted answers, unknown library categories, duplicate identities, and malformed sources before play.

Game state is separate from presentation. A first-response guard and timer token prevent repeated input and stale callbacks from scoring twice. A monotonic deadline handles delayed callbacks. Untimed scored play has no deadline; Explore has no timer or score. Preferences remain in page memory only.

The portable artifact contains this brief, the pinned RS frame, and the play application under /gameroom/games/sort-of/play/. Contract 2.0.0 metadata records Cards membership, Mike Besso as creator, approved review status, the committed source revision, frame version, canonical routes, a health route, and a digest of the shipped payload.

The artifact command requires clean committed source and verifies the original proposal against provenance/UPSTREAM.json. Build the approved edition with npm run build:rs-game. Packaging performs no deployment. A candidate must pass inspection before replacing an earlier local artifact. Local preview, human approval, staging, and production remain separate steps.

Fonts, card content, and application assets are bundled locally. There are no accounts, telemetry, backend, external runtime services, or persistent scoreboards. Opening a cited source follows its external HTTPS link.