Rules & scoring · 4-minute read
How to play Krillion.
Seven shared prompts, one answer each, 25 seconds on the clock. Not the best answer — the rarest correct one. Here is every rule, the six-tier ladder, and the depth zones the dive passes through.
The rules, in full
1. Seven prompts, same for everyone
Each dive deals seven open prompts in the same order for every player — categories like "name a country in Oceania" or "name a deep fried food". Open means there are dozens of correct answers; the game is about which one you reach, not whether you can reach any.
2. One answer, 25 seconds
You get one answer per prompt and 25 seconds to type it. The timer only decides whether you answer at all: an answer at second two and an answer at second twenty-three score identically if they're the same word. Treat the first fifteen seconds as thinking time and the last ten as commit time — panic-typing at second 23 is how good answers turn into typos.
3. The answer must be correct
It has to genuinely fit the prompt. A region isn't a country; a tournament isn't a sport; a performer isn't a character. An answer outside the answer bank scores nothing. Close spellings count when the meaning is unambiguous — a slipped key won't sink you — but a genuinely wrong answer is a wrong answer, the same as a blank.
4. Rare answers sink you deeper
Every accepted answer lands in one of six rarity tiers, graded by how many other players would have given the same thing. The first word most people type is worth the minimum; the answer almost nobody reached is worth the maximum. Each point sinks your dive ten metres, and the depth is your score.
5. The clock resets per prompt
The timer is per prompt, not per dive. A slow start on prompt one never steals time from prompt seven, so there's no reason to rush an early answer to "save time" for later — the time budget is the same every round.
6. Nobody is eliminated
A wrong or missing answer costs you the points for that prompt and no more. There is no streak to protect, no elimination, and no penalty that carries forward — which is exactly why a low-probability reach is often worth trying: it risks seconds, not the dive.
The six tiers
What each rarity band means.
Tier names follow the ladder used across Krillion-style games. The point values below are Krillion Zone's own estimates for our practice bank — the official game grades against live player data, so treat every number you read anywhere (including here) as an estimate until you see it in the official reveal.
| Tier | Meaning | Points | Depth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plankton | The prototype answer, the first word in everyone's head. Crowded water. | 10 | 100 m |
| Too Clever | The sideways pick the whole school converged on after skipping the obvious one. | 15 | 150 m |
| Schooler | Uncommon but not exotic — a dependable mid-depth answer. | 30 | 300 m |
| Rare | Genuinely uncommon. Most players never get this deep on a prompt. | 60 | 600 m |
| Deep Cut | The specialist's answer from a narrow corner of the category. | 85 | 850 m |
| One in a Krillion | Almost nobody typed it. Not every prompt produces one — when you land it, it's the round's story. | 100 | 1,000 m |
Your score is a place
The ocean you sink through is real.
Seven hundred points is 7,000 metres, and the water on the way down is mapped by oceanographers into five zones. Knowing the markers makes the depth feel earned.
| Zone | Depth | What's down there |
|---|---|---|
| Sunlight (epipelagic) | 0–200 m | Photosynthesis still works. Most of the sea life people picture lives here — and most Plankton answers surface here too. |
| Twilight (mesopelagic) | 200–1,000 m | Light fades to nothing. Host to the largest daily migration on Earth as animals climb up to feed and sink back by day. |
| Midnight (bathypelagic) | 1,000–4,000 m | No sunlight at all, near-freezing water, and the only light is made by animals. The Titanic rests at about 3,800 m. |
| Abyssal (abyssopelagic) | 4,000–6,000 m | The great flat abyssal plains that cover most of the ocean floor. |
| Hadal | 6,000 m + | The trenches, named in 1956 after Hades by the oceanographer Anton Bruun. Challenger Deep, the deepest known point, lies at about 10,935 m in the Mariana Trench. |
A perfect seven-answer dive ends 1,000 metres into the hadal zone — an honest, rare place to finish.
Common mistakes
Four ways new divers sink themselves.
Rushing the first two seconds
Fast is worth nothing. A second-two answer is almost always the prototype — the cheapest word in the category. Use the clock; it's on your side until twenty-five.
Stopping at the "clever" answer
Once everyone skips the obvious pick, they converge on the same second thought. If your answer feels contrarian-smart, assume a few thousand people feel the same cleverness. Go one step further out.
Obscure but wrong
A spelling gamble or a stretch of the category scores zero. Obscurity only pays when the answer is unarguably correct. Pick the rarest answer you're sure of, not the rarest you can imagine.
Ignoring the timer psychology
The clock pressure makes people grab the first solid answer. Divide the 25 seconds deliberately: scan, discard, re-angle, commit.
FAQ
Rules questions
How long is each prompt?
The official site describes 25 seconds per prompt, and that's what this site uses in practice mode too. Some third-party guides say 15 or 20 seconds — treat anything other than the official description as a typo or an estimate.
Does speed affect my score?
No. The clock only decides whether you answer at all. Your score comes entirely from the rarity tier of your accepted answer, so a second-fast answer earns nothing a twentieth-second answer wouldn't.
What happens if I time out or can't think of anything?
A blank or timed-out prompt scores zero for that prompt and adds nothing to your depth — nothing carries forward. On this site's practice modes a timeout or a pass counts as a miss, and in endless mode it costs one tank of air.
What if my answer is spelled slightly wrong?
Close spellings count when the meaning is unambiguous — a slipped key won't sink you. But an unclear guess that lands outside the answer bank is a miss: correct-but-misspelled beats obscure-but-wrong every time.
How deep is a perfect dive?
Seven top-tier answers score 700 points. Every point is ten metres, so a perfect dive reaches 7,000 metres — a thousand metres into the hadal zone, well past the Titanic's resting depth of about 3,800 metres.