Stroopwafels and Sjoelen make a perfect Dutch duo, reflecting our pride in our roots at AppSignal. As a fully remote company with team members across the Netherlands, UK, Spain, Greece, Latvia, and Pakistan, we embrace our Dutch heritage while working globally.

If you've tried AppSignal, you might remember receiving stroopwafels from us. Also, at Rails World 2023 in Amsterdam, we introduced Rails World to the Dutch game of Sjoelen. We try to excel in everything we do, so we've shipped thousands of stroopwafels and a Sjoelen board to Toronto ready for Rails World 2024.

In this guide, we'll introduce you to stroopwafel etiquette and the rules of Sjoelen.

Stroopwafels

Firstly, let's teach you how to pronounce Stroopwafel like a local. In Dutch, the 'oo' sounds like the 'o' in rope, not the 'oo' in boop. So, it's pronounced strope-wafel.

A stroopwafel consists of two thin layers of baked dough with caramel-like syrup in the middle. It was first made in the Dutch city of Gouda, where leftover breadcrumbs were sweetened with syrup. Nowadays, you can buy them fresh from a stand or at any grocery store in the Netherlands, where they're much cheaper than at Schiphol Airport (we don't have time to teach you how to pronounce Schiphol).

Since we started AppSignal, we have shipped well over 10,000 stroopwafels worldwide for conference sponsorships, softening up our partners, or bribing our clients; they're way more versatile than branded socks.

On 1 April 2014, we launched a stroopwafel subscription service to help our non-Dutch clients fuel their new stroopwafel addictions. While we no longer offer subscriptions, we still send them regularly to our new clients.

So, if you want the perfect sweet treat to go with your Tim Hortons coffee this Rails World, visit our stand. Don't forget, if you sign up to AppSignal, send us data and ask us nicely, we'll ship some stroopwafels to your door!

Sjoelen

A Sjoelen board (pronounced s-you-len) is flat, with several small pockets at the end, each with a different point value. In this game, the aim is to skillfully slide 30 small wooden discs across the board and evenly distribute them across all the pockets. Sjoelen is most popular with Dutch pensioners and, since Rails World 2023, Ruby developers.

How does scoring work?

The game involves shuffling 30 discs across the board over three rounds. Players aim to distribute the discs evenly among the pockets.

After each of the first two rounds, discs that haven't fully passed through the pockets are returned to the player, except for any disc overlapping another, which is removed for safety reasons. The remaining disks are then stacked into piles of four to make more room for subsequent rounds.

Scoring takes place after the third and final round.

First, players earn double points for each complete set of four discs, with one disc in each pocket. To calculate this, find the pocket with the fewest discs, multiply that number by 20, and then remove however many discs were in that pocket from all other pockets.

For any remaining discs, multiply the number of discs in each pocket by its point value and add this to the score from the complete sets. The maximum score of 148 is achieved by placing 28 discs evenly across all pockets (for 140 points) and the remaining two discs in the "4" pocket (for 8 more points).

If the above didn't quite sink in, we're experts at scoring Sjoelen games and will tally your score at Rails World!

See you in Toronto!

We can't wait to see you at Rails World 2024 in Toronto; we'll be handing out stroopwafels, swag, and scoring your Sjoelen games; rumor has it the attendees with the highest scores might even win a prize.

If you're curious about what to expect, you can:

• 1️⃣ Read our sponsorship announcement post
• 2️⃣ Read our Rails World 2024 guides
• 3️⃣ Sign up for a free trial of AppSignal

See you in Toronto!