The game
What is Krillocity?
Krillocity is a race to name as many answers as you can, where the rare ones count for more.
A prompt such as "Name a fruit" comes up for everyone in the room at once, and the clock gives you 30 seconds. Every answer you type and send is judged as it lands: apple is fine, and so is rambutan, but they are not worth the same. Each accepted answer swims your krill forward through a tunnel, a short way for the answer everyone gives and a long way for the one almost nobody does.
A race is 3 prompts, and your distance at the end is your score. You race up to 5 other players in an open race, or up to 11 friends in a private one, everyone on the same track, and watch every krill pull ahead or fall back as its answers land.
- prompts in a race
- 3
- on each prompt's clock, for as many answers as you can type
- 30s
- racers at most on one track, in a private race
- 12
A short history
Where the name-as-many-as-you-can game comes from
Asking someone to name as many things as they can against a clock is one of the oldest tests in psychology, and one of the oldest party games.
1938
Word fluency
L. L. Thurstone's study of primary mental abilities counts word fluency as one of them, measured by timed tests that ask for as many words as possible, such as words that begin with a given letter.
1944
The easy answers come first
W. A. Bousfield and C. H. W. Sedgewick time people naming members of a category and find the same curve every time: answers pour out at first, then slow to a trickle as the easy ones run out.
1967
F, A and S
Borkowski, Benton and Spreen ask people to say as many words as they can starting with a letter in a fixed time. The letters F, A and S become a standard test of the kind, still given by neuropsychologists.
1973
Colours, animals, fruits and towns
Bernard Isaacs's set test asks older patients to name up to ten of each of four sets. Naming animals for a minute becomes one of the most common quick checks of memory and language.
1988
Scattergories
Milton Bradley's party game gives players a letter, a list of categories and a timer. An answer scores only if no other player wrote it, so the common answer is worth nothing.
Now
The race
Krillocity keeps the clock and the category, counts every answer you can name, and pays the rare ones more, live against everyone else on the track.
Why it works
Why the rare answers come last
Decades of fluency tests describe the same pattern, and it is the pattern a race rewards.
Most answers come in the first seconds
Bousfield and Sedgewick's curve rises steeply and flattens: most of what a person will name in a minute comes in its first part, and the rest arrives slowly. The early answers are the ones everybody has, which is why they score least.
Answers arrive in clusters
Angela Troyer and colleagues showed in 1997 that people name in runs from one corner of a category (farm animals, then pets, then birds) and jump between them, and that the runs and the jumps both add to how many they name. When the answers dry up, a switch is what starts them again.
A minute is about twenty
In fluency norms published in 1999, healthy adults named roughly twenty animals in a minute, with the count falling with age and rising with years of schooling. Nobody runs out because the category does; they run out of what comes to mind.
The method
How to name more in 30 seconds
Quantity and rarity both count, so a good prompt starts fast and ends somewhere nobody else goes.
01
Read it in the count-in
Every prompt shows for two seconds before its clock starts. Use them to pick the corner of the category you will start in, so your first answer is typed the moment the clock runs.
02
Empty the obvious ones fast
The answers everyone gives still swim you 40 m each. Type them in a burst, short, and press Enter after each one.
03
Switch corners when you slow down
When answers stop coming, jump to another part of the category rather than waiting: from tropical fruit to berries, from capitals to islands. A fresh corner gives a fresh run.
04
Spend the last seconds going rare
By the end of the clock the easy answers are gone for everybody. That is when the answer only you would think of is worth looking for: an answer at One in a Krillion swims you 1,000 m.
| 5 Plankton answers | 20 points |
|---|---|
| 2 Too Clever answers | 16 points |
| 1 Schooler answer | 16 points |
| 1 Rare answer | 32 points |
| 1 Deep Cut answer | 64 points |
| 10 answers in 30 seconds | 148 points, 1,480 m |
The one Deep Cut is worth 64 points, more than the five Plankton answers together (20). The common answers still matter: they are the quickest points on the clock, and a racer who names only rare ones names too few.
In this game
How a race in Krillocity runs
Every room runs on one shared clock, so everyone in it sees the same prompt at the same moment.
01
The count-in
The prompt comes up for two seconds before its clock starts, the same prompt in every lane.
02
The clock
30 seconds to name as many answers as you can. Each is judged as it lands, and every lane moves as its answers are accepted.
03
Between prompts
As the clock runs out the race swims on, and a moment later the judge krill brings the next prompt down over the last. The standings beside the track keep moving the whole way.
04
The finish
After prompt three, FINISH, and the next race's lobby opens over the start line with your place, your distance and what it paid; the room's standings beside the track settle on their final metres. The next race starts the moment its lanes are full. Stay, and you are in it.
Vocabulary
Race terms, defined
The words psychologists use for naming against the clock, and the ones this game uses for its race.
- Verbal fluency
- How many words a person can produce under a rule in a fixed time. Psychologists test it two ways, by meaning and by sound.
- Category fluency
- Naming members of a category, such as animals or fruits, against the clock. Every prompt in a race is a test of it.
- Letter fluency
- Naming words that begin with a given letter, as in the F, A and S test.
- Cluster
- A run of answers from one corner of a category: farm animals, then pets.
- Switch
- The jump from one cluster to the next. Switching often is how people keep naming when the obvious answers run out.
- Lane
- One racer's line along the track's floor. An open race has 6, a private one up to 12, and yours is always the nearest.
- Plankton
- The tier for an answer nearly everyone gives: 4 points, 40 m.
- One in a Krillion
- The tier for an answer almost nobody reaches: 100 points, 1,000 m.