How Scoring Works in Rarest Answer Games

Scoring on this site is a small table plus two modifiers: a clock, and a single double. You are not graded on style. A legal answer has a tier from 1 to 6 inside that prompt, the tier has a point value, and everything else either multiplies that value once or pays zero.

The table lives in the game, not in a fan recap of some other title. Play a round from the homepage, then read the reveal if you want to see which bucket you hit. The rules page walks the same numbers through a full daily. This page is the arithmetic.

What does each tier pay?

These names belong to this game. They are not Krillion’s gem and not a Roblox difficulty label. A common correct answer is still correct. It is worth less because the rank inside the prompt put it in the bottom bucket, not because the game rejected it.

On the published great-ape list, Human and Bonobo are Common, chimpanzee is Familiar, western gorilla and Bornean orangutan are Uncommon, eastern gorilla is Rare, Sumatran orangutan is Epic, and Tapanuli orangutan is Legendary. That is one prompt’s stored tiers. The answer page lists them. Another prompt will not reuse those animals, and it may not fill the six buckets evenly. Two Common rows and two Uncommon rows on that list are a normal outcome. The bucket is a band, not a unique medal.

What is a perfect round, and what is a wasted double?

A daily round deals up to seven prompts: seven when the catalog can fill them, fewer when categories are still empty. Everyone on the same local date gets the same set. Seven Legendary answers are 7 times 100, which is 700. Seven Common answers are 35. Both rounds can be “all right.” The gap is the game.

Spotlight is a 2× boost you can arm once per round. It doubles the points of one prompt, and only if that prompt scores. The doubled values are 10, 20, 40, 80, 140, and 200. Used on a Legendary answer, one prompt is 200 and the other six Legendary answers stay 100, so the round is 800. Used on a Common answer, you have turned 5 into 10 and spent the only double. Arming it and then timing out does not spend it. You can disarm it before you submit.

That is why the strategy guide tells you to hold the boost for a prompt where you have a specific name. The math is the reason. A double on the bottom tier cannot catch a single undoubled Rare answer, because 10 is less than 40. A double on Legendary is the largest single addition in the game.

How do the clock and a miss change the score?

Each prompt gives you 25 seconds. A wrong guess costs one second and the box shakes. You may try a different name until the clock ends. Typing the same guess again is rejected and does not take another second. An empty submit does not score. Pass ends the prompt at zero. A timeout ends it at zero.

With the timer off, a wrong guess only shakes. Pass still ends the prompt with no points. The no-timer switch is for learning the move. It does not change the tier values. The share text will say “No timer” when you used it, so a no-timer 800 is not the same claim as a clocked 800. Both are real scores. They are different rounds.

A rejected name never becomes points because it was clever. The server is not in that decision on this site: the privacy policy says answer checking runs in the browser against published prompt data. If the name is not on the list, the tier is not looked up, and the prompt pays zero. Being “more obscure than the Legendary row” is still zero.

How is the tier chosen before the points?

The game reads the tier stored on the answer. It does not recompute fame while you type. The builder that is meant to fill those files ranks answers only against the other answers on the same prompt. Its popularity signal is monthly Wikimedia pageviews, summed over the twelve complete months ending October 2026, on English Wikipedia, or on English Wiktionary for word prompts. Wikimedia’s page view reference says the endpoints report page views for Wikimedia projects, with data from 1 July 2015. Rarity in that builder is the inverted average-rank percentile, so 1 is the least viewed. The builder’s cuts are Common below 0.2, Familiar below 0.4, Uncommon below 0.6, Rare below 0.8, Epic below 0.93, and Legendary from there up. Ties share a rarity.

Published files use that pipeline when their source line names Wikipedia or Wiktionary pageviews. The great-ape file’s source is Wikidata plus Wikipedia pageviews (2026-10), so its stored tiers are that rank. Score the prompt by the tier on the answer, not by re-running the cuts in your head. Pageviews are how often an article is read. They are not a count of how many players typed the name.

What does the reveal show that the total hides?

After a prompt you see your tier and a meter. A list of ten or fewer answers is shown in full, rarest first. A longer list shows the ten rarest and the ten most common. The screen also says how many answers the list held. A Legendary hit on eight names is a different result from a Legendary hit on eight hundred. The total at the end adds the points and counts how many prompts landed in each bucket. One Legendary and six blanks can look like a bold round. Seven Rare answers are 280 and are usually the more repeatable one. The end screen is the place to tell those apart.

The share grid is colored squares, one per prompt, plus the score. It can also say “Spotlight used.” It does not include the names you typed. Comparing totals with a friend compares buckets, not a leaked answer key. Party formats that use that grid are on the party ideas page.

Unlimited mode and the category pages use this same table. They do not move the daily streak. A practice 800 is not today’s daily 800.

Does any other rarest-answer game use this table?

Krillion’s own pages do not. The FAQ says some prompts are scored against a familiarity database of how often a word shows up in what people read and write, and other prompts get a mix of model help and a manual pass. It also says the top pick, the Krillion, is not chosen on rarity alone. The packs page describes seven prompts a day and says rare answers sink you deeper. It does not print 5, 10, 20, 40, 70, and 100. A fan table that uses those numbers is not repeated here. Our Krillion guide keeps the two games apart, including the comparison on Krillion versus this game.

Which pages were checked?

This site’s tier table and the Krillion FAQ, packs page, and the Wikimedia page-view reference, on 14 November 2026.