History prompt
Name a historical pandemic — Best Krillion Answers
Facing “Name a historical pandemic” 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: Antonine Plague — specific, valid, and uncommon enough for Deep Cut or better.
Avoid (Plankton): Black Death, The Great Plague of London — correct, but the crowd's first thought.
One in a Krillion — 100 pts
The rarest valid answers — maximum depth.
Antonine Plague · Plague of Cyprian
Deep Cut — 85 pts
Extremely rare picks most players miss.
Plague of Justinian · Third Plague Pandemic
Rare — 60 pts
Genuinely uncommon — strong scoring.
English sweating sickness · Russian flu of 1889
Schooler — 30 pts
Known but not top-of-mind.
Asian flu of 1957 · Hong Kong flu
Too Clever — 15 pts
A bit too obvious.
Spanish flu · COVID-19
Plankton — 10 pts
The crowd's default — avoid these.
Black Death · The Great Plague of London
How to play this prompt
Strategy notes specific to “Name a historical pandemic” — not generic advice.
Everyone remembers the headlines of history. The points are in the figures and events one chapter deeper.
The winning instinct on this one: skip your first thought entirely and type your second. Antonine Plague is a perfect example — completely valid, just not the reflex answer. Plague of Justinian plays the same role as a backup.
Watch out for Black Death. It's valid, but validity isn't the game — rarity is. The Great Plague of London has the same problem: everyone knows it, so everyone types it, so it scores like everyone.
Notice how English sweating sickness (Rare) outscores Black Death (Plankton) without being obscure at all. Rarity isn't about difficulty — it's about what the crowd overlooks.
Build yourself a mental shelf for this prompt: Third Plague Pandemic, Russian flu of 1889, Plague of Justinian. They're different answers, same rarity neighborhood — and that neighborhood is where dives are won.
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.