Krillion Tips and Strategy

1. Only a handful of answers are common

We hold the complete answer sheet, tier by tier, for 14 prompts, with 33,153 accepted answers between them. 95.5% of those answers are Deep Cuts, worth 85 points. The typical prompt has just 8 Plankton answers, the 10-point tier.

That turns the game around. You aren't hunting for one brilliant answer in a sea of bad ones. You are stepping around a small puddle of obvious ones. Name the first three answers that come to mind, set them aside, and give the next correct one you can think of.

2. Size up the list before you aim

Across the 616 prompts on record, the typical prompt accepts 96 answers, but the range is enormous: 24% of prompts accept fewer than 50, and 8% accept more than a thousand. The largest sheet on record has 32,273.

The two ends play differently. On a short, closed list, such as countries that share a border or the members of a small set, every answer is one that somebody knows, so the tiers are spread across the whole list and the rare end is the item people forget. On a long, open list, such as animals or foods, anything specific is a Deep Cut.

The first of our hints for today gives the number of accepted answers for each prompt and how few of them are common, without naming any.

3. Longer and more exact goes deeper

Of the 105 Plankton answers we have on record, 75% are a single word, and they average 7.4 letters. Of the 774 One in a Krillion answers, only 50% are a single word, and they average 10.7 letters.

Short general words are what everybody types. So go one level down: the species instead of the animal, the dish instead of the ingredient, the full name instead of the surname, the regional variety instead of the famous one.

4. Know the Too Clever trap, but don't fear it

Too Clever is the 15-point tier for the famous “obscure” answer. It is real but uncommon: of the 14 complete sheets we hold, 1 has any Too Clever answers at all.

The answers that land there are the trivia-night favourites: the one fact everyone learned as a surprise. If an answer makes you feel clever, ask whether you first heard it as a piece of trivia. See Too Clever answers from real dives.

5. Aim for 85, not 100

A prompt usually has one or two One in a Krillion answers, picked by hand, and a few prompts with very short lists have none. The official FAQ says they aren't chosen on rarity alone but also for how satisfying they are to land on, so there is no rule that finds them. A Deep Cut is 85 points and a Rare is 60: seven Deep Cuts make 595 out of 700. Play for those and take a 100 when it comes. The One in a Krillion answers so far show the kind of answer the game likes.

6. Spend the clock, don't save it

You get 25 seconds for each prompt, after 3 seconds in which the prompt is shown and the clock hasn't started. Use the preview to read the whole prompt, including anything in brackets: conditions like “pure elements only” are where answers get refused.

An answer that isn't on the list is refused, and you can type another while time remains. That makes the order clear: try the ambitious answer first and keep a safe one ready. An answer that finishes the prompt is better than none, because a prompt with no accepted answer scores nothing.

Checked against the game. The code the official site serves to every visitor gives 25 seconds to answer each prompt, after showing the prompt for 3 seconds. Last reviewed October 11, 2026.

Mind the spelling, too. The official FAQ says autocorrect is generous because many answers have aliases, so a near miss can turn into an answer you didn't mean. If the game says signal lost, that is your connection and not your answer.

7. Train on prompts you haven't seen

The habit of skipping the obvious answer takes practice, and the daily dive gives you seven tries a day. Krillion Unlimited on this site is free practice with our own original prompts and no daily limit, and the Krillion archive lets you read how past prompts were scored.

Where these figures come from

The counts on this page are worked out from the dives on this site each time the page is built, so they move as days are added. Sheet sizes cover every prompt on record. The split between tiers covers only the prompts whose complete sheet we synced from the game; for earlier dates we hold a sample of answers, which is enough to describe the answers on record but not to speak for the whole sheet. See our sources and editorial policy.