Sea Salt & Paper
64 questions players ask about Sea Salt & Paper, answered in plain words and graded by where the answer comes from. See also the full rulebook.
Updated 2026-10-29.
64 questions players ask about Sea Salt & Paper, answered in plain words and graded by where the answer comes from. See also the full rulebook.
Updated 2026-10-29.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
No — everyone starts with an empty hand and builds it by adding a card each turn. Setup only reveals two cards face up to form the discard piles.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
No. The first player may take the top card of a discard pile instead of drawing, and no replacement is revealed, so the second player chooses between the remaining face-up card and the deck. Taking a face-up card means no discard that turn.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
Yes. Setup reveals the top two cards of the shuffled deck as the discard piles, whatever they are, so a mermaid can start on a pile.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
First add a card to your hand (draw or take a discard), then optionally play duos, then, if you have at least 7 points counting hand and table, optionally end the round. You cannot play duos before drawing, and you call only after your duos are done, before the next player starts.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
One of the two you just drew. Keep one, and put the other face up on a discard pile; you cannot keep both and discard a card from your hand instead. If you discard a duo card you can retrieve it later only through a separate action such as crabs.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
The empty one. When you draw two cards and one pile is empty you must discard onto that pile; if both are empty either will do.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
No. On a normal turn you can only take the top card of one pile. The one exception is the crab duo effect, which lets you search a single pile of your choice.
Several experienced players agree; no official ruling.
Yes. Nothing forbids it, and later discards refill the empty pile.
Best reading from forum discussion; no official ruling.
Yes, as far as the forum can tell. The rules have no rule against it and the game would otherwise stall, but it leaves the deck empty, which ends the round without scoring unless you can call Stop that turn. The rulebook does not state this explicitly.
Yes in practice. Players can count each other's cards and BGA shows hand sizes; the rulebook says nothing to hide them. This is a reading, not a printed rule.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
Yes. You may play as many duos as you hold, one pair at a time, resolving each effect before the next. Cards gained from a crab, fish, boat or shark/swimmer effect can complete another pair the same turn.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
No. A duo is always played as a complete pair, both cards at once, and each pair stands alone. You may also hold a pair in hand and play it on a later turn.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
No, with one exception. Only duo cards are played during a turn (plus the four-mermaid win, see the End of game entry). Mermaids, collectors (shells, octopuses, penguins, sailors) and multipliers stay in your hand, where they still score, and are revealed only when the round ends.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
Yes. A pair is worth its point whether played or held; playing it only adds the effect. Duos left in hand when someone calls Stop therefore score but never trigger.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
One point per pair, regardless of colour. Two crab pairs (four crabs) score 2; a single unpaired duo card scores nothing on its own.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
Yes. It needs one shark and one swimmer; two sharks or two swimmers do not form it (the Extra Pepper Water Rodeo event is the exception). The pair gives one effect and one point, even though the card pictures show the icons side by side.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
No to both. You take a random card from an opponent's hand, never a card already played in front of someone. On BGA you click the opponent, not the card. You may play the pair even if nobody has a card to steal; the effect then does nothing.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
You pick one discard pile, look through it without shuffling, and take any card from it. You cannot search both piles, and you need not show the card you took. If you want, hold the crabs for later instead of playing them.
Several experienced players agree; no official ruling.
No. Sharks have their own icon and are called shark cards, so the Shoal of Fish does not count them. Only cards with the fish icon count.
Best reading from forum discussion; no official ruling.
Yes, per a reply from a Bombyx contact quoted in the thread. The extra turn from a boat pair counts as a second turn, so the Angelfish trigger can occur in each. This only matters with the Extra Pepper Angelfish.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
Each mermaid scores one point per card in your largest colour group; the next mermaid uses the next largest group, since no colour can be used for two mermaids. Mermaids themselves count as white. With three mermaids and three blue cards you score 3, 3 and 0. If two groups tie you choose which to use first.
Several experienced players agree; no official ruling.
Yes. Mermaids count as white cards, so they can form a white group, which can be your largest or a later group when scoring mermaids and the Last Chance colour bonus.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
The value printed for how many you hold is the score for that whole set, counted once. Three penguins score 5 in total, not 5 each.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
Yes. The rulebook says points are counted over both hand and table, so a multiplier such as the Lighthouse counts every boat you hold, played or not. The multiplier card itself is not counted as one of its type.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
No. Having 7 or more points (hand and table together) only allows you to call Stop or Last Chance; you may keep playing and decide on a later turn.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
Yes. The player ending the round reveals their hand and announces Stop or Last Chance. Other players reveal when they finish their final turn after a Last Chance call.
Several experienced players agree; no official ruling.
The rulebook gives no formal penalty. Players pick the cards back up and continue the round; the cost is that everyone saw your hand.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
The player to the left of whoever ended the previous round, whether they called Stop or Last Chance.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
All cards, played duos included, are shuffled together and the deck and two discard piles are set up again.
A publisher representative confirmed this in 2024, and it matches the rulebook's special case.
The round ends immediately and nobody scores. This applies when the deck is empty at the end of any player's turn, including the final turns after a Last Chance call; the discard piles are ignored. To collect points you must call Stop first. A publisher rep confirmed the Last Chance case on the English wording.
The designer answered this in 2024, and it matches the rulebook text about hands being protected once revealed.
Only from players who have not yet revealed. The caller is protected immediately, and every other player becomes protected after their own final turn and reveal. So the second-to-last player can still steal from the last one, but the last player has nobody left to steal from. The designer confirmed the last player cannot steal.
“When a player calls for last chance, he reveals his cards and they are now safe”
— Bruno des Montagnes, designer
Several experienced players agree; no official ruling.
Yes. On your final turn you take a card and play duos normally, and the effects work, except that steals from protected hands do nothing. When you have nothing more to play you reveal your hand.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
On Stop, everyone scores the points on their cards (hand plus table) and nobody gets the colour bonus. On Last Chance the caller bets on having the most points; see the next entries for win and loss.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
If the caller wins, the caller scores their cards plus the colour bonus (one point per card of their most common colour), and opponents score only their own colour bonus. If someone beats the caller, the caller scores only the colour bonus and the others score their card points, without colour bonus.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
The caller. The bet is won when the caller's total is higher than or equal to every opponent's, so opponents need strictly more.
The rulebook's definition of scoring covers hand and table, and the French rules agree.
On total points: cards in hand plus cards played in front of you. The English sentence that mentions only the hand is loose; the example and the French rules compare totals.
Several experienced players agree; no official ruling.
No. The colour bonus only changes what you add after the bet is resolved; it is not counted for the 7-point threshold or when comparing totals.
Several experienced players agree; no official ruling.
They are separate and do stack. Each mermaid scores normally at round end, whether the round ended by Stop or Last Chance. A winning Last Chance caller also gets one colour bonus counted independently, so the same colour size can pay twice. Mermaids affect the colour bonus only as white cards.
The rulebook text covers this directly, and forum replies agree.
No. Points are only scored when a round ends, so the game ends after that round's scoring. Targets are 40, 35 or 30 for 2, 3 or 4 players, and the highest total wins.
Several players report the publisher's updated rule; the rulebook text in the repo still shows the older tiebreak.
The tied player who scored more points in the final round wins. The older wording in the rulebook text here (the player who went last in the final round wins) was replaced in newer printings.
The rulebook wording and the designer video differ and no written ruling settles it; this is the better-supported reading.
You win immediately once all four mermaids are yours, but sources differ on whether holding them is enough. The rulebook says a player who places all four wins; the designer's French video is reported to treat holding all four as a win when you reveal them. A reading that mermaids can only be placed as duos would need two turns. Best supported: reveal them as soon as you hold all four, and the win does not need 7 points. If the fourth comes from a two-card draw, finish the draw and discard first.
A co-designer comment and the printed rules point different ways, and no written ruling settles it.
Unresolved. A co-designer's video-comment reply says yes (the three cards count 3 in hand), but the rulebook describes the trio as formed by placing three cards, and BGA does not award the points for an unplayed trio. To be safe, play the trio on a turn instead of relying on the hand.
No. A lone starfish scores 0. Played with a duo it cancels that duo's effect and adds 2 points, so the trio is worth 3.
Several replies, including one from a Bombyx contact, agree; no tagged official ruling.
No. The seahorse only helps complete a collector set and stays a seahorse for every other purpose, so multipliers ignore it. Bombyx staff replied to this effect on several threads.
A Bombyx contact and other players agree, and it matches the expansion's card text.
It replaces a missing card of one collector set (shell, octopus, penguin or sailor), but you must already hold at least one card of that set, and it can never raise the set above the maximum. It counts for only one set, so choose the best. It cannot stand in for a mermaid.
One reply supports it; no official ruling.
Yes. Replies say the seahorse counts as white, so with a mermaid it forms a two-card white group and adds one point for the white group. It does not count as a collector or multiplier card; it only stands in for a missing collector card.
Several experienced players agree; no official ruling.
No. The Cast of Crabs scores one point per crab card, including crabs in played pairs, but the lobster is not a crab.
Several experienced players agree; no official ruling.
Pair it with a crab. The lobster and crab form the duo.
One reply states it and the card pairings imply it; no official ruling.
No. Swimmer plus jellyfish always gives the jellyfish effect, and swimmer plus shark always gives the shark effect.
Players describe it this way and the card text agrees; no official ruling.
They draw a single card and cannot take any other action, so they cannot play duos or end the round. Forum players call this a strong play when you are confident of winning with your hand. Taking the single card does not require a discard.
A Bombyx contact stated this on the forum, but the BGA implementation behaves differently.
No. It triggers once, at the end of your turn, so new cards from it cannot trigger it again. BGA reportedly lets it trigger repeatedly, which differs from the Bombyx answer.
A Bombyx contact corrected the answer; no formal ruling.
No. You cannot use that card in a duo or trio that turn, and it cannot help you call Stop or Last Chance, because Angelfish resolves after the end-of-round window. An earlier forum answer saying yes was corrected.
One experienced reply; no official ruling.
Yes, if you already reached the required points before Angelfish triggered, you can call Last Chance and then add its points. Whether this also applies to Stop is a poster's guess.
A Bombyx contact answered this in 2026; no tagged official ruling.
No. Under the jellyfish effect an opponent draws only one card, even with Angelfish active; a Bombyx contact replied that jellyfish overrides everything.
A Bombyx contact described it, but BGA reports differ; no formal ruling.
It protects you from all other players' attacks: shark and swimmer, jellyfish and swimmer, and (with Water Rodeo) double shark or double swimmer. The shell placed face down protects you for the rest of the round only, then is shuffled back, so you need a new one each round. BGA is reported not to block swimmer plus jellyfish.
A Bombyx contact and other players agree; no formal ruling.
No. The shell played as protection is face down and counts for nothing: not for your shell collection, colour counts, mermaid scoring or the colour bonus.
A Bombyx contact and other players agree; no formal ruling.
No. These effects steal only a played duo, and any set including a starfish is a trio. A pair is two boats, two fish, two crabs, or a swimmer with a shark or jellyfish.
Reported from the BGA implementation only.
Yes, you choose which card. The Extra Pepper rules let you look at the opponent's hand and swap one of your cards with one of theirs, and on BGA you pick the exact card. If you have nothing in hand to give, BGA reports the swap is simply lost; the printed rules do not cover that case.
A Bombyx contact and other players agree; no formal ruling.
No. The Tornado changes only mermaid point values (zero for everyone), not the mermaid victory rule, so with the Dance of the Mermaids you can still win with three mermaids.
A Bombyx contact answered this; no formal ruling.
Each octopus is worth 1 point, so 1 to 5 octopuses score 1 to 5 instead of 0, 3, 6, 9, 12. Holding a single octopus becomes better.
Several experienced players agree; no official ruling.
Yes. The round event applies to everyone during the round, and the personal event applies only to its holder, so the holder gets both.
Several experienced players agree; no official ruling.
Event cards are assigned after the round's points are tallied, based on total points (most or fewest). A holder keeps the card only while its condition holds; otherwise it is discarded and goes to whoever now qualifies. A player holding two keeps one and discards the other, and on a tie both players discard their cards. A player moving from last to first keeps only the card that now applies.
Several experienced players agree; no official ruling.
No. Event cards are not part of your hand and carry no colour symbols, so they never count for colour or mermaid scoring.
One reply states it; no official ruling.
No. Each expansion is independent; use either or both with the base game.