How to Play Krillion
The Krillion game flips trivia on its head: being right is the entry fee, being rare is the win. This guide walks you through the complete rules — the 7-prompt structure, the 25-second timer, all six rarity tiers and the dive-depth scoring — with a worked example round and the mistakes every new player makes. By the end you will know exactly how to play Krillion, and why your second idea is almost always better than your first.
What Is the Krillion Game?
Krillion is a daily rare-answer word game. Each day serves a set of quick “Name a …” prompts — name a country, an ocean animal, a weather phenomenon — and instead of one correct solution, every prompt hides a whole answer sheet of valid options ranked by how hard they are to think of. The official game describes the loop in one line: seven prompts a day, rare answers sink you deeper. This site is an unofficial practice edition of that format, with its own original question bank and a fresh daily dive at 00:00 UTC.
Where do the answer sheets come from? The official Krillion FAQ explains that answer sets are built by aggregating dictionaries, wiki pages, encyclopedias and whatever sources a question calls for, then merged and cleaned; rarity is judged with a familiarity database of how often a word actually turns up in what people read and write, supported by LLM assistance and a manual pass. Our practice edition follows the same philosophy with a hand-written bank that we grade and maintain ourselves.
How to Play Krillion: Rules at a Glance
These are the complete rules for the Krillion game on this site. Every rule below is enforced by the game itself — nothing here is optional:
- 1
7 prompts per dive
A dive is seven "Name a …" prompts drawn from categories like geography, animals, food, sports and everyday life. Finish all seven to post a score.
- 2
25 seconds per prompt
The timer starts the moment a prompt appears. Submit one typed answer before it hits zero, or the round scores zero.
- 3
One answer at a time — but wrong guesses are free
If your answer is not on the sheet, the game tells you immediately and you can keep trying until the clock runs out. Only your last valid answer (or the timeout) counts.
- 4
Rarity decides your points
Every valid answer is graded into one of six tiers, from Plankton (+5) to One in a Krillion (+100). Spelling variations and common alternate names are handled automatically.
- 5
Points become depth
Each point sinks you 10 meters. A perfect dive scores 700 points and touches 7,000 meters — the abyssal floor.
- 6
One daily dive, unlimited practice
Everyone worldwide plays the same daily dive until the 00:00 UTC reset. Outside of it, Unlimited mode serves endless practice rounds from the full bank.
How the Six Rarity Tiers Work
Rarity is the heart of the Krillion scoring rules. Answer sheets are graded into six tiers, and the exact same answer can be worth twenty times more than another simply because fewer players find it:
| Tier | Points | Depth | Official-style meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plankton | +5 | 50 m | The first answer that pops into almost every player's head. Valid, but everyone found it. |
| Too Clever | +10 | 100 m | The cheeky answer every try-hard gives. Feels smart, yet thousands of players give it too. |
| Schooler | +25 | 250 m | A solid answer that swims with the school. Plenty of players land here. |
| Rare | +40 | 400 m | Now you are thinking. Only a small share of players sink this deep. |
| Deep Cut | +60 | 600 m | A genuinely deep answer. Most players never reach this depth. |
| One in a Krillion | +100 | 1000 m | The rarest of the rare. If you found this, you are one in a krillion. |
Watch the Too Clever trap especially: the official FAQ defines it as the go-to “obscure” pick that isn't actually that obscure — the answer that feels like a galaxy-brain play but that thousands of players submit too. Honest common answers beat fake-clever ones more often than new players expect.
A Worked Example Round
Here is a real prompt from our bank with a real answer sheet, showing how the same question pays out completely differently depending on how you play it:
Example prompt
Name a country in Europe?
Five other answers sat between these tiers — 40 valid answers total on this sheet. Playing it safe with France scores 5 points; the San Marino line alone scores 100. That spread is the entire game.
Want to see today's real sheets? Open the Krillion answers for today or dig through the answers archive.
Daily Dive vs Unlimited Practice
Once you know how to play the Krillion game, there are two ways to actually play it. The daily dive is the main event: everyone on Earth gets the same seven prompts, you get one attempt, and the 00:00 UTC reset brings a brand-new set. It is where scores are compared and streaks live.
Unlimited practice is the gym: seven random prompts per round from the full bank, same timer, same tiers, no daily cap. It exists so that a spent daily attempt never has to be the end of your session — warm up before the dive, drill the categories that fooled you after it, and your streak stays untouched either way.
New players should do both on day one: play the dive to feel the real pressure, then take an Unlimited round immediately after while the lessons are fresh. The fastest way to learn how to play Krillion well, though, is simply repetition — the timer teaches pacing, and the answer sheets teach where the rare water is.
5 Beginner Mistakes to Avoid
- 1Typing the first thing you think of. First instincts are exactly how the Plankton tier got its name — pause, then dig one layer deeper.
- 2Falling for the Too Clever trap. If your answer feels like the clever outlier everyone else will miss, assume thousands of players had the same idea.
- 3Panicking in the first ten seconds. The timer punishes rushed submission, not thought — use the window, and remember wrong guesses are free while it runs.
- 4Giving up after one rejection. A rejected answer just means that pick was common or absent; the sheet usually accepts dozens of alternatives, so fire again.
- 5Ignoring categories you find boring. Deep Cut answers cluster in unfashionable corners — weather phenomena, card games, pasta shapes. Practicing only your favorites leaves points on the table.
How to Play Krillion – FAQ
How do you play the Krillion game?
You answer 7 short "Name a …" prompts, one typed answer each, under a 25-second timer per prompt. Every answer is checked against that prompt's answer sheet and graded into one of six rarity tiers — the rarer your valid answer, the more points it scores. Your total points convert into dive depth, and the deepest diver wins the day.
What happens if my answer is wrong in Krillion?
Nothing bad — you keep playing. While the 25-second clock is still running, a rejected answer costs nothing: type something else and submit again. Only when the timer expires does the round lock in as a zero-point miss.
How does rarity scoring work in Krillion?
Each prompt carries a sheet of accepted answers, and every answer belongs to a rarity tier based on how many players would realistically find it: Plankton (+5) for the obvious mass picks, Too Clever (+10) for the cheeky answer everyone thinks is clever, then Schooler (+25), Rare (+40), Deep Cut (+60) and One in a Krillion (+100) as answers get genuinely hard to find.
Is this the same as the official Krillion game?
The format follows the official game — the official site describes itself as "seven prompts a day" where "rare answers sink you deeper" and builds its answer sets from dictionaries, wikis and encyclopedias. This site is an unofficial practice edition with its own original question bank, 7 prompts a day and a 25-second timer, plus Unlimited practice. The official game lives at krillion.io.
What is the Too Clever tier in Krillion?
Too Clever (+10) is the trap tier: the go-to "obscure" pick that isn't actually that obscure. Answering Iceland for a European country, or tomato for a fruit, feels clever — but thousands of players give the same cheeky answer, so it scores barely above the obvious one.
How do I get better at Krillion?
Practice deliberately: skip your first instinct, think in niche families (micro-states, deep-sea creatures, regional brands), use the full timer, and study expired answer sheets in the archive to see where the deep answers live. Then drill your weakest categories in Unlimited practice until rare answers stop feeling like luck.
Rules Learned. Ocean Waiting.
You know the rules, the tiers and the traps. Now put them to work: 7 prompts, 25 seconds each, and a whole answer sheet between you and the abyssal floor.
🌊 Play the Krillion Game Now