How to Land a One in a Krillion: the 100-Point Answer

What is a One in a Krillion?

The top of the six-tier ladder: 100 points, 1,000 metres, the single answer the game has designated as the best possible reply to that prompt. It is worth 15 points more than a Deep Cut, and it is the only tier that is decided by the ladder’s designer rather than by how the crowd behaves.

That difference matters. Deep Cut measures obscurity; One in a Krillion measures fit — the same distinction the tier table is built on.

Why is the strangest answer almost never the top tier?

Because “strange” is a property of the player, not of the answer. A weird reply is memorable, and memorable replies cluster: everyone who wants to sound unusual reaches into the same small bag of famously odd examples, which is exactly what the 15-point tier is made of.

The top tier tends to be the opposite kind of answer — precise, specific, and obviously correct the moment you hear it. The reaction it produces is “of course”, not “where did that come from”.

What kind of answer lands at 100?

Patterns worth looking for, in rough order of how often they work:

None of these is “think of something exotic”. They are all “answer more exactly”.

How do you test a candidate before the clock runs out?

Two questions, both fast:

1. Does it answer the prompt as written? If it only fits the loose, half-heard version of the prompt, it will read as off-topic rather than deep.
2. Would a stranger call it obvious? If the answer is the first thing a person outside the game would say, it is a Plankton answer wearing a specific costume.

If both pass, type it. If the first fails, drop it — an answer that does not fit earns nothing, no matter how interesting it is.

Does the top answer change from run to run?

No. The ladder is prepared per prompt, so the 100-point answer for a given prompt stays the 100-point answer forever. That is why replays are worth playing: the same prompt returns with the same ladder, and the answer you found the second time is still the answer the third time.

It is also why the tier table is fixed rather than adaptive. A ladder that moved would make every guide — including this one — wrong by the next day.

How much does one top answer actually change a run?

On its own, not much: 100 points against 85 is a rounding error next to a zero. The tier earns its reputation in aggregate, where seven of them are 700 and seven Deep Cuts are 595 — a perfect dive versus a very good one.

So the practical advice is not to hunt 100s. It is to stop losing 85s to the 15-point tier, which is a much bigger leak and a much easier fix: the Too Clever trap is where most dives quietly lose their depth. If you would rather start from the basics, how a dive is scored covers the ladder end to end.