Krillion Rarity Tiers

In Krillion, an answer's rarity decides both your score and how deep you dive. The core rule is simple: common answers float while rare answers sink. The moment you submit, the algorithm checks how often your word was submitted by players worldwide — its share of all valid global answers — and sorts it into one of six rarity tiers. A word almost nobody types earns 100 points; the first word everyone thinks of earns barely 10.

Every valid answer lands in exactly one of the six official tiers below. The examples come from the official demonstration prompt "Name a landlocked country".

Two real prompts show the full tier spread in action — and why the "clever" middle of the pack is where scores go to die.

• "Name a dinosaur" — One in a Krillion (100 pts): Leaellynasaura, Megalosaurus. Too Clever trap (15 pts): Archaeopteryx and Compsognathus, pub-quiz staples thousands of players also remember. Plankton (10 pts): Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus.
• "Name a cocktail" — One in a Krillion (100 pts): Remember the Maine, a 1930 Savoy deep cut. Too Clever trap (15 pts): Negroni Sbagliato and Boulevardier, drinks the internet spread far wider than bartenders realize. Plankton (10 pts): Margarita, Mojito, Martini, Old Fashioned.

The 15-point band is where overthinkers crash. Words that feel obscure but are famous from pub quizzes and social media — Liechtenstein instead of an obvious landlocked country, Archaeopteryx instead of an obvious dinosaur — occur to thousands of players at once, so they all collide in the same low band. To actually score, aim for the top of the table: highly specific, academic, or historically obscure words that you can also spell perfectly. Spelled correctly, a Deep Cut earns 85 points and a true One in a Krillion earns 100.

💡 If you have heard it in a bar quiz, so have thousands of other players — it is a 15-point word.