How to play the rarest answer game, live or on your own

The rarest answer game has one rule. Everyone gets the same prompt, such as "Name a fruit", and gives one answer, and the fewer people who would say yours, the more it scores. The fruit everybody thinks of scores almost nothing. A real fruit that almost nobody would name scores the most.

Squadrillion is Decka's version, and it plays two ways. In a live room, everyone answers on their own phone while the big screen shows each player's submarine diving, deeper for a rarer answer. On your own, the free game deals you seven prompts, with no sign-up. If you have played Krillion, the live room plays like it, with a whole room answering at once.

Below are the rules, how the scoring works, how to find a rare answer, and how to run a round for a class, an office or a party. The prompts that play best come last.

How to play the rarest answer game, step by step

1. Read the prompt. It shows for three seconds before the answer box opens, so everyone starts together.
2. Type one answer. You have 25 seconds by default. Speed earns nothing: an answer in the last second sinks as far as one in the first.
3. Try another if it bounces. An answer the game does not recognise comes back with "isn't on our charts", and you can try again while the clock runs.
4. Watch it dive. An accepted answer locks in, and your submarine sinks the moment it lands. The rarer the answer, the deeper it goes.
5. Share what you match. The lobby puts the rule in one line: "Say what someone else said and you share it." Two players with the same answer get half its depth each.
6. Mind the clock. When time runs out, whatever is in your box goes in once. An empty box, or an answer the game does not recognise, lands nothing.
7. Go deepest. A game is seven prompts, and the deepest player at the end wins.

With a room, that is the whole game. Alone, nobody can share your answer, so step five never happens and every answer is worth its full depth.

How the scoring works

Every answer on a prompt's list sits in one of five tiers, and the tier decides how far it sinks.

Tier	Sinks	What it means
Obvious	50 m	One of the first answers people give
Popular	250 m	Common, but not the first to mind
Unusual	600 m	Known, rarely said
Rare	1000 m	A real deep cut
One in a squadrillion	1500 m	Valid, and almost nobody says it

Rarity means how rarely people in general would give an answer, not how rarely your room does. Each prompt's list runs from the answers everyone thinks of to the ones almost nobody does, and every answer on it carries its tier.

Sharing is where the room comes in. Each extra player who gives the same answer halves it again, for everyone who gave it. Two players with a Rare answer get 500 m each, and three get 250 m each. The players who gave it first rise on the big screen as the match lands.

The game is generous about how you spell an answer and strict about what it is. Capitals, accents, punctuation, a leading "the", plurals and other names for the same thing all count as one answer. It forgives one typo in an answer of five letters or more, and two in an answer of eight or more. Two spellings of one answer are also one answer when it comes to sharing.

A perfect game is seven unshared answers at the top tier, and it stops just short of the bottom of the world.

How to find a rare answer

Answers bunch together more than they feel like they do. Castro, Curley and Hertzog asked 246 adults in the US to type as many birds as they could in 30 seconds. 57% of them typed blue jay. The 83 young adults among them made 588 mentions between them and named only 71 different birds, 17 of them typed by just one person.

That was people listing every bird they could think of, not a room choosing one. Read it as a picture of how answers crowd together, not a forecast of your room. Squadrillion's list for "Name a bird" holds nearly eleven thousand. A room's answers crowd into one small corner of it, and the deep answers are everywhere else.

Skip the answer that came easily. If it came easily to you, it probably came easily to the person next to you, and every match halves it.

Pick a corner of the category, then an answer in it. For a bird, think of one continent, one habitat or one family first. The lists were filled out the same way, region by region and family by family, so the corners hold plenty.

Play what you know and the room does not. A birder, a gardener or a chemistry teacher has at least one prompt where they can dive alone.

Make sure it is real. A made-up answer bounces. One that is still in your box when the clock runs out, and is not on the list, lands nothing at all.

On a short list, look for the one people forget. The list for "Name a US state" has 50 answers. It rates none of them Rare: 4 are Obvious, 37 Popular and 9 Unusual. A room collides on a list like that, so the state everybody forgets is worth the most.

The lists are long, not complete, and a real answer sometimes bounces. When yours does, drop in another while there is time.

Dive or Dig: the two worlds

The game plays in one of two worlds. The world changes the picture and never the rules.

Dive sends submarines down through the ocean's five zones: the Sunlight zone, the Twilight zone, the Midnight zone, the Abyss and the Trench.

Dig sends drills down through Topsoil, Bedrock, Fossil beds and Crystal caves to Magma.

Each zone's name appears on the screen where it begins, and the free game's last screen names the zone you reached. Decka's ready-made science and geography games play in Dig, and the rest in Dive.

Play the rarest answer game free, on your own

The free game needs no sign-up and nothing to install. Pick Dive or Dig, and it deals you seven prompts with 25 seconds for each. Type an answer and press "Drop it".

Your best depth in each world is kept in your browser, so you have a number to beat. At the end you see your total, the zone you reached and what each prompt landed. Go again, and it deals seven new prompts.

Alone, every answer is worth its full tier, because nobody can share it. To play the same seven with a group, press "Make it a live game" on the last screen. It opens the form for a live game with that world and those seven prompts filled in, once you have a free account.

How to run the rarest answer game live, with a room

Make a Squadrillion game in Decka. It offers its ready-made games first, each with seven prompts chosen, or a custom game, and the form asks four things.

• World. Dive or Dig, and the form's own line is the whole story: "The same game in either world: only the big screen changes."
• How the room plays. "Round by round" is "One prompt at a time for everyone, then its rarest answers". "Free for all" is "Everyone plays the seven at their own pace".
• Prompts. Seven from the bank. Pick them by category or with "Search the prompts", or press "Deal seven for me". They play in the order the form lists them.
• Answer clock. Anything from 10 to 60 seconds, and 25 by default. Round by round, the clock ends early once everyone has answered.

Players join by link or QR code and answer in their phone's browser, with no app and no account. The game needs at least two players, because sharing an answer is half of it.

On the big screen, every player is a submarine or a drill, and each one drops the moment its player answers. The leader's name tag turns gold. When someone lands a One in a squadrillion answer that nobody else has given, the screen announces it, with their name and what they said.

Round by round, each prompt ends on "The rarest answers", up to five of them, with the most-said answer underneath whenever an answer was shared. The game ends on "Final depths", beside up to five answers "Said by nobody else". A game of seven prompts takes about four minutes round by round at the default clock.

Round by round is the better show, because the whole room watches each prompt land together. Free for all suits a big room, which then never waits on its slowest player.

Round by round, if a prompt stalls the room, "Skip this prompt" on the presenter's remote drops it, and nothing landed on it counts. "End the game" goes straight to the final depths, and every answer that has landed still counts.

Someone who arrives late still plays. Round by round, they answer from the prompt in play. Free for all, their seven start when they arrive.

Sound plays on the big screen only, and phones stay silent. You can turn it off from the big screen or the remote. Afterwards, the activity's report lists every player's final depth and every answer said by nobody else.

The rarest answer game in the classroom

Depth comes from knowing a subject, not from typing fast, which suits a class. A Rare answer is worth twenty Obvious ones, however long it took to find.

The ready-made Science class game plays in Dig. It asks for a chemical element, a gas at room temperature, a bone in the human body, a mammal, a dinosaur, a named moon and a unit of measurement. The elements and the bones are short lists, so a class collides on them. Mammals run to thousands, so one student who knows an unusual one dives alone.

Play it round by round, so the class sees each prompt's rarest answers together. The reveal moves on by itself after eight seconds, so save the talking for the end. Ask why an answer is rare, and whether everyone believes it is real. The activity's report keeps every answer said by nobody else for that conversation.

Every prompt in the bank was chosen to be safe in a classroom and an office. None is about alcohol, drugs, smoking, weapons, violence, crime, death, illness, sex or gambling, and none touches religion or politics. An answer on Decka's list of words to hold back is refused exactly like one the game does not recognise, and it never reaches the big screen.

The rarest answer game as an icebreaker at work

Nobody waits for a turn and nobody stands at the front: everyone answers at once, from their own phone. The page on ice breakers that aren't cringe has the research on why the queue and the spotlight are what spoil an opener. Answers are not anonymous, though. Each one lands on the big screen with its player's name.

The ready-made Deepest diver game is written for a team. It asks for a job, an item of stationery or office supplies, a hobby, an emotion, a dog breed, a sport and a city. Everyone can answer all seven, and the hobbies and jobs tell people something about each other.

Two colleagues who give the same answer rise together on the screen, which shows the room who thinks alike.

On a video call, share the screen the game is on, and everyone joins from their phone by link. For an all-hands, choose free for all, so a big room never waits for its slowest player.

The rarest answer game at a party or game night

Play round by round with the sound on. The reveal is where a party argues, and the most-said answer under the rarest ones shows how many people thought alike.

Four ready-made games are made for a party:

• Food and drink asks for a fruit, a vegetable, a cheese, a type of pasta, a herb or spice, an ice cream flavor and a type or blend of tea.
• Music and screen asks for a musical instrument, a band, a singer, a film, an animated film, a sitcom and a cartoon character.
• Christmas party asks for a Christmas film, a toy, a sweet or candy, a cookie or biscuit, a board game, a fairy tale character and a type of tree.
• Geography plays in Dig, and asks for a country, a capital city, a river, a city in Europe, a volcano, a desert and an island.

Squadrillion scores each player, not teams. For a team game, give each team one phone and let it join under the team's name.

Rarest answer game prompts that play well

Every prompt comes from Squadrillion's bank, which holds 651 of them in 16 categories, and most have more than a thousand answers each. You cannot write your own prompts yet. These play well, by what they do to a room.

Short lists, where the room collides

• Name a US state
• Name a country
• Name a chemical element
• Name a bone in the human body
• Name a play by William Shakespeare
• Name one of the 88 official constellations
• Name a king or queen of England or Britain

Long lists, where one answer can dive alone

• Name a bird
• Name a city
• Name an island
• Name a mammal
• Name a singer
• Name a film
• Name a river

For a class

• Name an English word borrowed from French
• Name a figure of speech or rhetorical device
• Name a word for 'hello' in a language other than English
• Name a Roman or Byzantine emperor
• Name a character from a Shakespeare play
• Name a unit of length
• Name an ancient writing system (like cuneiform or hieroglyphs)

For work

• Name a job
• Name a hobby
• Name an emotion
• Name a word for a personality trait
• Name a computing term (like cache or firewall)
• Name a kitchen utensil or gadget (like a whisk or a ladle)
• Name a type of hat or headwear

For a party

• Name a board game
• Name a cartoon character
• Name a sitcom
• Name a dessert
• Name a cheese
• Name a toy
• Name a portmanteau word made by blending two words (like brunch or smog)

Mix the two kinds in one game. A short list makes the room collide and laugh, and a long list gives the person who knows something a prompt to dive alone.