Krillion Scoring Explained: Tiers, Points & Depth System
Last updated: 2026-10-13
In short, krillion scoring is survey math: every answer you give is ranked against what all other players answered, and its rarity decides its tier. The most common answers land in Plankton at 10 points; answers almost nobody gave hit One in a Krillion at 100 points. Your seven answers total up to 700 points max, converted to depth at 10 meters per point — a perfect dive reaches 7,000 meters. Everything below breaks down the tiers, what moves answers between them, and the trap that sinks clever players.
If you are new here, read how to play krillion first for the rules and timer, then come back — this page is the deep end of the scoring system. Once the tiers click, the strategy hub shows you how to hunt rare answers on purpose.
One thing to know up front: tiers measure popularity, not difficulty. A question can feel easy and still hide a Krillion-tier answer, because the tier comes from the crowd’s behavior, not the question’s hardness.
| Tiers | 6 — Plankton (10 pts) to One in a Krillion (100 pts) |
| Points per answer | 1–6, or 0 for invalid |
| Depth rate | 10 meters per point |
| Max daily depth | 7,000 m (700 points) |
| Tier basis | Share of players who gave the answer |
| New dive | Daily at 12:00 AM Eastern Time |
The Tier Ladder: All Six Tiers
Six tiers, 1 to 6 points each — your answer’s popularity decides where it lands.
Every answer in the game’s bank carries a tier, set by the share of players who gave it. The cutoffs are fixed, the answers inside each tier are not — as more players answer, individual answers can drift between tiers. Here is the full ladder, with the depth each tier contributes per answer.
Read the names top to bottom as a dive: plankton at the sunlit surface, krillion in the dark below. Your job on every prompt is to sink as far down this ladder as correctness allows.
| Tier | Share of players | Points | Depth per answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| One in a Krillion | Rarest valid answers | 100 | 1,000 m |
| Deep Cut | Extremely rare | 85 | 850 m |
| Rare | Genuinely uncommon | 60 | 600 m |
| Schooler | Known but not top-of-mind | 30 | 300 m |
| Too Clever | A bit too obvious | 15 | 150 m |
| Plankton | The crowd’s default answer | 10 | 100 m |
| Missed | Invalid, unknown, or blank | 0 | 0 m |
What Moves an Answer Between Tiers
Tiers come from player data — synonyms merge, spellings normalize, and tiers can drift.
The single biggest driver is raw share: if 60% of players typed “rose” for “name a flower,” rose is Plankton, end of story. It does not matter that roses are “easy” or “obvious” — the tier is a headcount, not a judgment.
Synonyms collapse into one answer before tiering. “NYC,” “New York City,” and “the Big Apple” all count as the same answer and share one tier, so clever rewording of a popular answer buys you nothing. Minor spelling variants merge the same way.
Tiers can also drift over time. An answer sitting at Deep Cut can sink to Rare as the player pool grows and more people discover it — yesterday’s secret is today’s crowd pick. The bank is rebuilt from real player data, which is why the same answer can score differently across weeks.
What never moves an answer: how fast you typed it, how confident you felt, or how hard the prompt seemed. Speed earns nothing in krillion scoring — only rarity does.
Worked Example: One Prompt, Six Answers
One cereal prompt, six answers, all six tiers — here is exactly how it breaks down.
Prompt: “Name a breakfast cereal.” Below is an illustrative scoring — the real tiers come from the player pool, but the shape is exactly how it works. Notice the pattern: the further an answer sits from the supermarket’s center aisle of the mind, the deeper its tier.
Now imagine you played this prompt across six different days with one answer each. Corn Flakes gets you 10 points (100 meters); Grape-Nuts gets you 100 points (1,000 meters). Same prompt, same correctness, ten times the depth — that gap, repeated across seven prompts, is the entire game.
| Answer | Why it lands there | Tier | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corn Flakes | The default — everyone’s childhood box | Plankton | 10 |
| Cheerios | Nearly as universal as Corn Flakes | Schooler | 30 |
| Frosted Flakes | Popular, but a step down in top-of-mind | Too Clever | 15 |
| Lucky Charms | Recognizable, less automatic | Rare | 60 |
| Cap’n Crunch | Nostalgia pick with a thinner crowd | Deep Cut | 85 |
| Grape-Nuts | The punchline cereal — loved by few | One in a Krillion | 100 |
The “Too Clever” Trap: When Rare Scores Zero
An answer nobody gave scores 0 — rare has to stay inside the answer bank.
Here is the trap that sinks smart players: rarity only counts inside the game’s answer bank. If effectively no other player gave your answer, it is not Krillion-tier — it is invalid, and it scores 0. “Name a planet” answered with “Kepler-442b” is technically a planet and maximally rare, and it earns you nothing.
The bank needs a minimum number of real players to have given an answer before it can hold a tier. That is the line between rare and random: Grape-Nuts is rare (thousands of players typed it); a cereal you invented in the shower is random (nobody did).
The rule of thumb: if you had to invent it, do not give it. Aim for the answer that is real, correct, and just unpopular — the one a few thousand people know and a few million forgot. That is where Deep Cut and Krillion live.
From Points to Depth: The 10-Meter Rule
Add your seven answers, multiply by 10 — that is your depth, your real score.
Depth is points × 10 meters, nothing more. Seven Plankton answers (70 points) leave you at 700 meters; seven One-in-a-Krillion answers (700 points) put you at 7,000 meters, on the trench floor where no sunlight reaches. Most real dives land between 1,500 and 2,800 meters — an honest mix of crowd answers and genuine finds.
Depth exists because points alone are forgettable and meters are not. “I hit 260 meters today” tells a story; “I scored 26 points” does not. Compare depths with friends, track your own average across the week, and judge every strategy tweak by one question: did my depth go up?
| Points | Depth | Ocean zone | What it says |
|---|---|---|---|
| 70–140 | 700–1,400 m | Sunlight zone | Crowd answers — room to grow |
| 150–280 | 1,500–2,800 m | The drop-off | Solid mix of common and rare |
| 290–560 | 2,900–5,600 m | Twilight zone | Genuinely rare answer hunting |
| 565–700 | 5,650–7,000 m | The trench | Exceptional — nearly all Deep Cut+ |
Frequently Asked Questions
How are Krillion tiers decided?
By rarity. Every valid answer sits in one of six tiers: One in a Krillion (100 points) for the rarest answers, Deep Cut (85), Rare (60), Schooler (30), Too Clever (15), and Plankton (10) for the crowd’s most common picks. Synonyms merge first.
Can my tier change after I answer?
Your locked-in score for the day does not change. But the underlying tiers are rebuilt from player data over time, so the same answer can sit in a different tier next week as the crowd discovers it. Yesterday’s Deep Cut can become today’s Rare — which is why reusing old winners is a weak strategy.
What score do I get for a wrong answer?
Zero points and zero meters. Wrong answers, blank answers, and answers so obscure they fall outside the game’s answer bank all score 0. Close spellings are forgiven when the meaning is clear, but an answer nobody recognizes is treated the same as no answer at all.
What is the maximum Krillion score?
700 points — 100 on each of the seven daily prompts — which converts to 7,000 meters of depth. A perfect dive means hitting One in a Krillion on all seven prompts in one day. It is rare enough that most long-time players remember exactly when they did it.
Why did my rare answer score zero?
Most likely it fell outside the answer bank — effectively no other player gave it, so the game could not tier it. This is the “too clever” trap: rarity only counts when an answer is real and recognized by at least a small slice of players. Invented or ultra-obscure answers score the same as blanks.
Does everyone get the same tiers for the same answer?
Yes. Tiers are global, set from the full player pool, not from your personal history. If “quinoa” is Rare today, it is Rare for everyone who gives it today. Your edge never comes from different scoring — it comes from finding answers the crowd has not found yet.