Krillion Rarity Tiers Explained: Too Clever, Deep Cut & One in a Krillion

Krillion Rarity Tiers Explained: Too Clever, Deep Cut & One in a Krillion

Krillion scores every answer in one of six rarity tiers, from Plankton at 10 points to One in a Krillion at 100. Rarity reflects how familiar an answer is: the more players an answer occurs to, the shallower it lands. Knowing the tiers by name, value and behavior is the difference between guessing and playing — this page is the tier dictionary, and the full mechanics live in scoring explained.

Verification note: tier names and point values were verified against the live game in September 2026 (see also the score calculator, which uses the same values).

How is Krillion rarity determined?

Rarity is relative, not absolute. Krillion rates every accepted answer against a familiarity database of how commonly answers are known, with LLM assistance and a manual pass on top. If thousands of players think of "pizza" for a food prompt, pizza floats at the surface. A regional dish that is equally correct but far less familiar sinks. The same logic repeats inside theme packs, where your answers are still rated by how uncommon they are.

Three properties follow from this design:

• There is no universal deep answer. Today's Deep Cut can be tomorrow's Plankton once an answer becomes too well known.
• Correctness is the floor, rarity is the score. A wrong answer scores nothing; a common answer scores little; a rare correct answer scores a lot.
• Your tier depends on familiarity, not timing. The rating comes from a familiarity database with LLM review and a manual pass — it does not matter whether you play early or late in the daily cycle.

The six Krillion rarity tiers and their points

Every accepted answer lands in exactly one tier. Deepest first:

Two tiers deserve special mention because players ask about them by name. Too Clever is the "almost deep" tier: you dodged the obvious answer, but plenty of players had the same clever idea. Treat it as progress — your instinct is one ring away from the crowd. One in a Krillion is the jackpot tier that gives the game its name: a correct answer so uncommon that you were, almost literally, one in a krillion.

Rare answers sink deeper: the one-line rule

The official line — "Rare answers sink you deeper. Obvious ones barely count." — compresses the whole system into one sentence. Players often shorten it to rare answers sink deeper, and that is exactly the mechanic: common answers bob at the surface for 10 points, rarer answers sink deeper down the tier ladder until a One in a Krillion pick reaches the floor at 100.

The same line answers two nearby questions. Players who ask about Krillion levels should know the game has no XP-style progression — the six tiers are the levels, and they reset every dive. Players who ask about Krillion ranks are closest to the bearing band: finishing a dive labels you from Plankton to One in a Krillion, which works as a per-day rank rather than a permanent one.

From tiers to score, depth and bearing

The seven prompt scores add up to your dive total, and depth equals the total times ten — a 420-point dive reaches 4,200 meters. The final total also maps to a bearing band that names your performance:

The score calculator computes all three from your seven tier picks, so you can see exactly what swapping one answer from Rare to Deep Cut is worth before you commit.

How to reach the deeper tiers

Depth is a knowledge-positioning problem. Four habits move answers deeper:

1. Audit your shallows. After each dive, find the answers that scored Plankton or Too Clever — those are your crowd-instinct tells.
2. Produce a sibling answer. For every shallow pick, name a correct alternative one ring further out (a sequel instead of the original, a microstate instead of a headline country).
3. Study what rare looked like. Past reveal sheets in the answer library show real examples of every tier, every day.
4. Drill your weakest family. The theme packs concentrate one domain at a time, so the rare answers you learn stick.

The full scoring system — how tiers combine into depth and bearings — is in scoring explained, and the validator guide explains why some correct-sounding answers are rejected before tiers even apply.

Play the tiers, not the clock

Every daily prompt gives you 25 seconds, and the fastest answer is usually the crowd's answer. Slowing down just enough to produce your second-best idea is the single highest-value habit in Krillion. Track whether it works in your logbook, and check tips to beat your score for the complete strategy set.