Krillion Scoring Explained
Updated September 30, 2026
Quick answer
Krillion scoring is one addition. Each of the seven prompts earns you one of six fixed tier values — 10, 15, 30, 60, 85 or 100 points — and your daily score is those seven numbers added up. There is no partial credit and no bonus for speed: two players who land the same answer on the same prompt get the same points.
The total is then multiplied by ten, because one point equals 10 metres of depth. A perfect dive is 700 points, which is 7,000 metres — the trench floor. The lowest possible score with all seven answers accepted is 70 points, or 700 metres.
The six fixed values
Every accepted answer is stamped with exactly one of these. The values don't move: they're the same six rungs every day, and the rarity of your answer is what decides which rung you land on.
| Tier | Points | Depth | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| One in a Krillion | 100 | 1,000 m | The pick almost nobody else typed |
| Deep Cut | 85 | 850 m | Specific, still clearly valid |
| Rare | 60 | 600 m | Better than the crowd, no gamble |
| Schooler | 30 | 300 m | The middle rung — common but safe |
| Too Clever | 15 | 150 m | Accepted, but the crowd got there too |
| Plankton | 10 | 100 m | The first word most people type |
How a single dive adds up
Take a dive that touches every tier once and misses the last prompt entirely:
100 + 85 + 60 + 30 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 300 points
300 × 10 = 3,000 metres of depth
That's the whole formula. It also shows why the arithmetic rewards a high floor more than a high ceiling: moving one answer from Plankton to Rare is worth +50 points, but one rejected answer costs you an entire prompt.
Zero is not Plankton
This is the most common scoring mistake. Plankton is the lowest accepted tier (10 points). A rejected answer earns 0. They are different states, and the gap matters:
- An answer inside the official set always pays at least 10 points, even if it's the most obvious thing you could type.
- An answer outside the official set pays nothing — however reasonable, correct or clever it sounds.
So writing a safe, boring, valid answer is never worth less than 10 points, while a gamble that the game doesn't recognise is worth nothing at all. In our archive, most answers that came back lower than players expected were not rejected — they were accepted at Too Clever (15), which is a scoring decision rather than a rejection.
Depth, and the ocean it maps to
The 1-to-10 conversion isn't decoration — the depth zones line up with the tiers.
| Score | Depth | Zone |
|---|---|---|
| All Plankton (7 × 10) | 70 points | 700 m — sunlit water |
| All Schooler (7 × 30) | 210 points | 2,100 m — midnight zone |
| All Rare (7 × 60) | 420 points | 4,200 m — abyssal |
| Perfect dive (7 × 100) | 700 points | 7,000 m — the trench floor |
A single One in a Krillion answer drops you a full kilometre in one word, while a Plankton answer moves you 100 metres. That's the theme in one line: Plankton float in the light, and the rarest answers take you to the bottom.
Why answers get rejected
Krillion doesn't score whether your answer is correct in the ordinary sense — it scores whether it's inside the official set for that prompt, and how rare it is inside that set. That creates three separate ways to lose points:
- It's valid but too common. The most obvious answer scores Plankton, 10 points. Most players lose more points here than anywhere else.
- It's a near-miss. The right kind of thing, but not on the list — a region where the prompt asked for a country, a tournament where it asked for a sport. This scores 0.
- It was accepted but crowded. Your answer fits, it just isn't rare — that's the Too Clever tier, 15 points.
One quirk worth knowing: the game holds some category borders loosely, and accepts answers a strict reading would rule out. We keep a running record of those in the archive, prompt by prompt, with the official pool size for every date.
Where the points actually leak
Two things follow directly from the arithmetic, and neither of them is about being clever:
- Consistency beats a single big hit. Four Rare answers and three Schooler answers (330 points) beats one Deep Cut surrounded by six Plankton (145 points) — every day, not just sometimes.
- Zeroes are the expensive part. One rejected answer costs 30 points against a Schooler baseline, or 60 against a Rare one. No tier upgrade can repay a busted prompt as cheaply as avoiding it.
If you want to know what a pool size means for your chances on a specific day, every date in the archive lists all seven prompts with the number of accepted answers, so you can see which prompt decided your run.
Krillion scoring FAQ
How does Krillion scoring work?
Seven prompts, six fixed tier values (10, 15, 30, 60, 85, 100). Your score is the seven values added together, and each point is 10 metres of depth.
What is the maximum score in Krillion?
700 points, or 7,000 metres — seven One in a Krillion answers at 100 each. The lowest score with all seven answers accepted is 70 points, or 700 metres.
Does an answer that isn't recognised score zero?
Yes. A rejected answer earns 0, which is not the same as Plankton. Plankton is the lowest accepted tier at 10 points.
Is there a speed bonus in Krillion?
No. Points come from the rarity of your answer, not how fast you typed it. The clock only decides whether you submit anything at all — every prompt gives you about 20 seconds.