Krillion Categories Ranked: What 2,524 Answer Banks Reveal

We counted the accepted answers behind every live prompt in Krillion, 2,524 of them. The widest categories are geography and places, jobs and society, and everyday objects, each with a median of 180 to 186 accepted answers per prompt. The tightest by far is countries, at a median of 59. And across every bank, two thirds of the answers the game accepts score Rare or deeper.

That last figure is the one worth sitting with. Rare answers are not scarce: they are the majority of what the game will take. What makes an answer common is the crowd, all reaching for the same few words. Here is what the numbers say category by category, and how they should change what you type in the Krillion game.

Every prompt carries an answer bank: the list of answers the game accepts, each with a tier from Plankton (4 points) up to One in a Krillion (100). For each of the 2,524 live prompts with a bank, we counted the distinct accepted answers as the bank lists them. We then grouped prompts by category and took the median for each group, so a single enormous bank cannot drag a whole category up. The tier shares below are pooled across every accepted answer in every bank.

Three honest caveats. A bank's size is the number of answers the game accepts, not the number of true answers in the world. Pooled tier shares lean toward the big banks, because they contribute more answers. And category labels are ours: some prompts could reasonably sit in two. Across all prompts, the median bank holds 137 answers, the smallest 22 and the largest 610.

Median accepted answers per prompt, widest first:

1. Geography and places: 186
2. Jobs and society: 184
3. Everyday objects: 180
4. Geography features: 179
5. Transport: 174
6. Plants and fungi: 170
7. Brands: 163
8. Games: 162
9. Film and TV: 160
10. Music: 154
11. Sport: 150
12. Food and drink: 139
13. Animals: 124
14. History: 121
15. Science: 119
16. Wordplay: 113
17. Movies (titles): 108
18. Cities: 105
19. Cuisine: 102
20. Countries: 59

Most categories sit within a fairly narrow band, roughly 100 to 190. Countries is the outlier, and for a simple reason: there are only about 195 countries, and a bank lists only the ones that fit its prompt. Ask for a country in Africa or a country with a red flag and the true set is small before anyone types a word.

Here is how all accepted answers split across the six tiers:

• Plankton (4 points): 5.3%
• Too Clever (8 points): 8.6%
• Schooler (16 points): 19.7%
• Rare (32 points): 25.5%
• Deep Cut (64 points): 26.2%
• One in a Krillion (100 points): 14.7%

Add the bottom two together and they come to 13.9%. Rare and deeper come to 66.4%. Put that against a typical 137 answer bank and, if it followed the pooled mix, it would hold about 7 Plankton answers, 12 Too Clever, 27 Schooler, 35 Rare, 36 Deep Cut and 20 One in a Krillions. The low tiers are a short list. Players pile onto it because those are the answers memory hands everyone first.

You can see it in which answers land at the bottom most often. In our analysis, "Titanic" is Plankton on 22 different prompts, "Apple" on 19, "Shrek" on 18 and "Paris" on 17. "Cat", "Batman", "Fish", "House" and "Water" are each Plankton on 16. These are not wrong answers. They are answers so famous that they fit many prompts, and everyone reaches for them on all of them.

The biggest single banks in the game are "Name an Italian cheese" (610 accepted answers), "Name a dish made with lentils" (525), "Name a city in Germany" (485), "Name a gym exercise" (458), "Name a city in Eastern Europe" (457), "Name a train station" (395), "Name a city in Japan" (349) and "Name a video game" (340). At the pooled mix, the Italian cheese bank alone would hold about 90 One in a Krillion answers.

In a bank this wide, the risk is not failing to find a valid answer. It is spending your one accepted answer on the first thing that comes to mind, because so does everyone else. The 3 second count-in is a good moment to let those first picks arrive and set them aside.

The more useful habit is to change the route your memory takes. Most players go straight at the category itself. Instead, come at it sideways: for a German city, think of a football club, a car factory, a river or a beer; for a gym exercise, pick a muscle first and then the move that works it; for a train station, think of a journey you have taken or a film scene on a platform. Each cue opens a different part of the bank than the one the crowd searches.

The smallest banks are "Name a province of China" (22), "Name a body part ending in -er" (24), "Name a US president before 1900" (24), "Name a combat sport in the Olympics" (25) and "Name a geological period" (25). Countries as a whole has a median of 59.

Tight does not mean flat. If a 22 answer bank followed the pooled mix, it would still hold about 3 One in a Krillions; a 25 answer bank about 4. The rare tiers are there, just fewer of them, and the crowd's favourites take up a bigger share of a small set.

Two things follow. First, in a tight bank the hard part is recall, not rarity: you may know only a handful of valid answers. Since a wrong answer is refused rather than penalised, keep typing while the clock runs; only an accepted answer ends the prompt. Second, walk the set in order instead of waiting for inspiration. Trace the map from one coast to the other, run through presidents in sequence, or go through geological time era by era. Psychologists call it the serial position effect: people recall the start and end of a list best and the middle worst, which suggests the middle of a sequence is where your memory, and the crowd's, runs thinnest.

Practical advice, drawn from the numbers above:

• Geography, places and geography features (179 to 186): the widest banks in the game. Use a journey as the cue, a coastline or a road trip, rather than the capital or the biggest name.
• Jobs, society and everyday objects (180 to 184): walk a building in your head, room by room or desk by desk. Steer clear of "House", "Water" and "Car", Plankton on 16, 16 and 13 prompts.
• Transport and plants and fungi (170 to 174): wide banks with dull obvious answers. "Airplane" is Plankton on 13 prompts, so start from a purpose, like a harbour, a farm or a mountain, and see what it suggests.
• Brands, games, film and TV, music (154 to 163): home of the cross-category celebrities: "Shrek", "Star Wars", "Harry Potter", "Michael Jackson" and "Sonic the Hedgehog" are each Plankton on 13 or more prompts. If your answer is famous enough to fit three different prompts, it is probably Plankton on all three.
• Sport and food and drink (139 to 150): middling banks. A region, a season or a single ingredient narrows your search to ground fewer players cover.
• Animals (124): "Cat", "Dog", "Fish" and "Bee" are Plankton on 13 to 16 prompts each. Picture one habitat and work across it instead.
• History, science and wordplay (113 to 121): narrower banks where recall is the bottleneck. Spend more of the clock trying, since refused answers cost nothing but seconds.
• Movie titles, cities and cuisine (102 to 108): the tight end of the main pack, and home to the most famous Plankton of all: "Titanic", "Jaws", "Jurassic Park", "London", "Tokyo", "New York City". Here, a single year, decade or region is the cheapest way off the crowd's path.
• Countries (59): the tightest category by far. Walk the map in order, and expect fewer rare answers to exist, so take the one you are sure of.

In Endless mode you dive on three tanks of air, and a prompt with nothing accepted, through the clock running out or a pass, costs a tank. Tight banks are where tanks are most likely to go, because recall fails before rarity matters. On a small bank, an accepted Schooler beats a refused stretch of guesses that ends in nothing. A One in a Krillion gives a tank back, up to three, so the wide banks are the place to reach.

In multiplayer, the reveal after each prompt shows every answer in the room with its tier. Watch it on a famous-answer prompt and you will see the pooled numbers come to life: several players on the same Plankton, and the deeper answers each found by one person, or nobody.

Next time a prompt comes up, ask two questions before you type: is this bank wide or tight, and what is the answer famous enough to fit five other prompts? Then go the other way. Krillion Unlimited has no daily cap, so you can test the category tips across as many dives as you like. For the scoring ladder in more detail, see our guide to getting better at Krillion.