The Six Tiers at a Glance
Every accepted answer in Krillion lands in one of six rarity tiers. Each tier is worth a fixed number of points, and every point sinks you 10 metres. That means the tier you land in is not just a label — it is literally how far you descend.
| Tier | Points | Depth |
|---|---|---|
| Plankton | 4 | 40m |
| Too Clever | 8 | 80m |
| Schooler | 16 | 160m |
| Rare | 32 | 320m |
| Deep Cut | 64 | 640m |
| One in a Krillion | 100 | 1,000m |
A perfect dive — 700 points across all seven prompts — puts you at 7,000 metres, on the trench floor. But most players won’t see that until they stop giving the answers everyone else gives.
Plankton: The Obvious Answer Costs You Depth
Plankton is the answer everyone thinks of first. If the prompt is “Name a city in California,” Plankton is Los Angeles. It is correct, it is valid, and it moves you a meagre 40 metres.
There is nothing wrong with Plankton as an answer. It is simply the most common one, and Krillion scores rarity, not correctness. The obvious answer is worth almost nothing because almost everyone can produce it. To get anywhere deep, you need to stop fishing for the first thing that comes to mind.
Too Clever: The Trap of Feeling Smart
Here is where many improvers get stuck. You avoid the obvious answer, find something a little more specific, and think you have cracked the game. Then the result comes back: Too Clever, 8 points, 80 metres.
That is only double Plankton. Why?
Because Krillion’s scoring is based on how many other people would say the same thing. And the answer that feels clever to you probably feels clever to a few thousand other players too. There is a whole tier of people who all had the same “clever” idea. You didn’t outsmart the crowd; you joined a smaller crowd. The game is not rewarding your intelligence — it is rewarding how few people share your corner of the map.
The way to escape Too Clever is to push further. If your first non-obvious answer is still a mainstream alternative, there is likely a smaller, stranger, more technically precise answer waiting underneath.
Schooler, Rare, and Deep Cut: The Real Depth
From Schooler upward, each tier roughly doubles your depth. Schooler answers are the ones that require a bit of knowledge or memory. Rare answers start to feel genuinely impressive. Deep Cut answers make other players wonder how you got there.
The pattern is simple: the tier, not the clock, is the whole score. Answering fast earns you nothing. The 25-second timer only decides whether you get to answer at all. So instead of rushing, use the time to interrogate your first instinct and ask: what would most people say? Then discard that. Ask again. Discard again. The points live in the corner cases: the smallest valid example, the one from a country nobody thinks of, the technically correct edge of the category.
One in a Krillion: The 1,000-Metre Answer
One in a Krillion is the answer nobody else reached. It sinks you 1,000 metres in a single prompt — a quarter of the way to the trench floor by itself. You will not land here every game, and you should not try to force it. But you can increase your chances by going specific, then going sideways.
Out of all seven prompts in a run, even one One in a Krillion can turn an average round into a deep dive. A few Deep Cuts mixed with Rares will also get you far. The goal is not to be clever; it is to be unreachable.
Putting It Together: Depth Is the Score
Krillion quietly converts rarity into a physical number. 4 points is 40 metres. 100 points is 1,000 metres. Every accepted answer pulls you downward, and the total depth at the end of the dive is your score. A wrong answer is refused, not punished — it costs you only the seconds you spent on it.
So the next time you see a prompt, resist the Plankton, smile at your Too Clever instinct, and then go one step weirder. The trench floor is waiting for answers that nobody else thought to give.
