How to play Curryillion

The sixty-second version

A Curryillion round is one run through seven prompts. Every prompt asks you to name one real basketball answer that fits a category — a player, a team, a coach, an award winner, a college or a moment. You get 24 seconds and up to five guesses. When you submit a correct answer, the booth reveals which rarity tier it came from and how many points it earned.

Rarity is the whole game. The obvious answer is always valid and always scores least. Answer one step sideways and you score more. The name that makes your friend say "they were on that team?" scores most. Seven perfect answers score 700 and the building comes down.

A round, step by step

1. 01

   Open today's game

   One round is available per Eastern day and it is the same seven prompts for every player, so the scores are comparable. A new round appears at midnight Eastern; the homepage countdown always tells you how long the wait is.

2. 02

   Read the prompt before the clock starts

   The prompt appears first, with the category tag, while a short read gate gives you a beat to think. The 24-second shot clock starts when the answer box opens. The clock is the format, not a trick: it keeps the game moving and stops perfect answers from becoming homework.

3. 03

   Name your answer

   Type a real basketball answer and press SHOOT. The input is already focused, so the whole loop is type, enter, next. Your first correct answer scores; you never get a second bite at the same prompt after a hit.

4. 04

   Spend your five tries wisely

   A wrong guess burns one of five tries and the clock keeps running. Spelling is forgiven — plurals, accents, punctuation, spacing, common nicknames and small typos all match — so you should almost never lose a try to a typo.

5. 05

   Read the reveal

   The reveal names the canonical answer, the rarity tier and the points. A brick — five misses or a dead clock — scores nothing but goes into the box score honestly. The flavour line tells you what the tier means in the arena's voice.

6. 06

   Close the box score and come back

   Seven prompts make one round. The result screen shows your total out of 700, your streak, your best and a spoiler-free challenge link you can send to the group chat.

Scoring, tier by tier

Every prompt ships a hand-checked board of accepted answers. Each listed answer sits in one of five rarity tiers. The tier estimates how few players would reach for that answer — not whether the answer is correct: every listed answer is true, and every correct answer scores at least a layup. If you name a real answer we have not catalogued yet, you still score the UNCHARTED consolation bucket (+10) rather than nothing.

Two labels are not board tiers. UNCHARTED +10 is the consolation bucket: you named a real answer that our hand-checked board has not catalogued yet, so it still scores, still goes in the box score as a yellow square and is logged for the next board update. It is not a rejection — it is the honest answer to a 508-player dataset that cannot list every deep cut.

A brick is different: no answer at all. Five wrong guesses, or a dead shot clock, scores zero and shows up as a black square. It is not a punishment beyond the zero; the next prompt is already waiting.

The shot clock and the read gate

Twenty-four seconds is borrowed from the sport for a reason. A basketball possession is short, frantic and decisive; a Curryillion prompt should feel the same. Long enough to think of three names, short enough that the first one is tempting and the third one is brave.

The read gate exists so the clock never eats your reading time. The prompt is on screen for a beat with the category tag before the answer box opens, then the clock starts and the input is focused. If the timer expires you get a buzzer, a brick and the reveal — no penalty beyond the zero.

Five tries, forgiveness and synonyms

Each prompt gives you five tries, and the matcher is generous about how you write an answer. Plurals, accents, punctuation, spacing and casing are normalised. Common abbreviations and hand-authored aliases — the ones a real fan would type — are accepted too. You are being tested on whether you know the answer, not whether you can spell a surname from 1978.

What dodges the matcher is a genuinely different answer: a valid name that is not on that prompt's board. If it is a real answer we have not catalogued, the round becomes UNCHARTED +10 — logged for the next board update, worth a bucket, never a dead end. When a suggestion appears, it is the matcher offering the nearest canonical name so you can correct a near miss without spending a guess on trivia-club pedantry.

If you run out of tries or the clock hits zero, the round is a brick. The game does not shame you for it; the box score just records the miss.

The five ways to play

The daily round is the ritual, but Curryillion is not a one-run game. Everything below is free and available from the home screen.

• Daily round. Seven prompts, once a day, logged. This is the only mode that touches your streak, your best and your daily history.
• Archive. Every round that has already aired is available, from launch one onwards. Play a day you missed, or replay a favourite without changing your streak.
• Themed packs. Seven packs — players, teams, hardware, college & draft, world stage, the numbers and courtside lore — played in short chapters. Pick the flavour of basketball you want instead of a mixed round.
• Shootaround. Unlimited random batches of seven prompts that never touch your daily record. Good for warming up, or for testing a theory about how rare your instincts are.
• Challenge. Replay a friend's round from their link, then compare scores. Nobody needs an account; the link carries no answers.

Streaks, logbooks and challenge links

Finish a daily round and your streak increases by one. Miss a day and it resets to zero. Curryillion will not nag you about it. The streak is a gentle ritual marker, not a subscription trap. Archive, pack, shootaround and challenge runs never change it.

The logbook is where the long game lives: best score, average, streak history, badges and every rare answer you have discovered. It lives in your browser's local storage, which means it belongs to you — and only you. Clear site data and it goes; the privacy page has the full story.

When a round ends you can copy a challenge link. It carries the day number and your score, but no answers and no prompts. Send it to a friend: they play the same seven prompts, then see whether they beat you. There is no sign-up on either side, and the link spoils nothing.

Seven habits of annoyingly good players

• Reject your first answer on purpose. It is nearly always a layup. Naming it silently and then moving one step sideways is the single biggest scoring habit in the game.
• Think in eras before names. The obvious name of any era is gone in the first ten seconds. The points are in the role player, the second stint, the forgotten champion.
• Use the whole prompt. If it asks for a coach, a college or an award, the famous player is not always the answer. Read the noun, not the vibe.
• Trust the weird-but-true answer. Curryillion boards are curated, not generated from hot takes. Real, surprising answers are exactly what the +100 tier exists for.
• Do not panic at ten seconds. One answer is enough. A half-court answer typed at five seconds still scores +70.
• Play the pack that scares you. College & draft and world stage prompts train lateral thinking faster than another night of pure player names.
• Read the reveal. The flavour line tells you what the tier means. Over a week that feedback recalibrates what "rare" feels like in your head.

How to play: questions, answered