History prompt
Name a famous explorer — Best Krillion Answers
Facing “Name a famous explorer” in a dive? Here is how to think rare: the best picks, the safe backups, and the crowd defaults to avoid. Every answer below is real and valid — rarity decides the tier.
Best rare pick: Ibn Battuta — specific, valid, and uncommon enough for Deep Cut or better.
Avoid (Plankton): Columbus, Lewis and Clark — correct, but the crowd's first thought.
One in a Krillion — 100 pts
The rarest valid answers — maximum depth.
Ibn Battuta · Zheng He
Deep Cut — 85 pts
Extremely rare picks most players miss.
Marco Polo · Leif Erikson
Rare — 60 pts
Genuinely uncommon — strong scoring.
Ferdinand Magellan · James Cook
Schooler — 30 pts
Known but not top-of-mind.
Vasco da Gama · John Cabot
Too Clever — 15 pts
A bit too obvious.
Christopher Columbus · Hernan Cortes
Plankton — 10 pts
The crowd's default — avoid these.
Columbus · Lewis and Clark
How to play this prompt
Strategy notes specific to “Name a famous explorer” — not generic advice.
History prompts punish the textbook answer. Think past the bolded names.
Lead with Ibn Battuta. It's the kind of answer that makes other players say 'I knew that!' after the reveal — which is exactly why they didn't type it. Marco Polo works the same way if you want a second bullet in the chamber.
Columbus feels safe because it's obviously right. That's precisely why it's worth the least — safety is crowded. Lewis and Clark is the same kind of comfortable, low-scoring pick.
The middle of the bank tells the real story: Ferdinand Magellan lands in Rare while Columbus sits in Plankton — same prompt, wildly different rarity. That gap is exactly where the points hide.
Rare answers travel in packs: if Leif Erikson comes to mind, James Cook and Marco Polo are usually one thought away. Train yourself to pull the whole cluster, not just the first name that surfaces.
Rated 4/5 difficulty — only 12 banked answers, so matching the bank is genuinely hard. Precision matters more than speed here.
Related prompts
More History prompts to train on — same rarity thinking, new answers.