Rules and strategy
How to Play Noillirk
To play Noillirk, read an everyday prompt and type the answer you think most people would give. You have 20 seconds and 3 guesses; the higher your answer ranks on the crowd’s board, the more points you score and the higher your balloon climbs. A climb has 7 prompts.
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How to play Noillirk, step by step
- 1
Start a climb
Open the Daily on the home page, or Classic and Endless on the Unlimited page, and press Start climbing. A Daily or Classic climb has 7 prompts.
- 2
Read the prompt and its restriction
Prompts ask for everyday things, often with a limit: “Name a green vegetable”, “Name an animal that hibernates”. Answers outside the limit are not on the board.
- 3
Type the most common answer
Enter one answer and press Guess. You get 20 seconds and 3 guesses per prompt; the first guess that is on the board is locked in.
- 4
Read the board
The top nine answers appear with your answer highlighted and its points. Press Next prompt (or Enter) when you are ready.
- 5
Finish and share
After the last prompt you see your altitude, an emoji grid to share, and in the Daily how many players found each top answer.
The goal of Noillirk: the common answer, not the right one
Noillirk turns the usual quiz upside down. There is no single correct answer to “Name something you find in a kitchen”. There is a most common one: fridge. Every prompt has a ranked board of the answers people give most often, and your job is to land as close to the top of it as you can.
That makes the game less about knowledge and more about empathy. The best players are not the ones who know the most fruit; they are the ones who can guess which fruit pops into a stranger’s head first. Expertise can even hurt: a chef asked to name a spice may reach for something specific, while the crowd simply says salt, pepper and cinnamon.
Noillirk scoring rules
Points depend only on where your answer sits on the board. Each point lifts Kril 20 metres, so your score and your altitude always tell the same story.
| Your answer is | Result | Points | Climb |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 on the board | Top answer | 100 | 2.0 km |
| #2 to #4 | Top 4 | 64 | 1.3 km |
| #5 to #9 | Top 9 | 32 | 640 m |
| #10 and below | On the board | 16 | 320 m |
| Not on the board, passed or out of time | Missed | 0 | 0 m |
| Perfect 7-prompt climb | 700 | 14.0 km | |
How Noillirk matches your answers
You should not lose a climb to spelling. Answers are compared without capitals, accents, punctuation or little words like “the” and “my”; plurals count as singulars, small typos are forgiven and common alternative names are on the board too. These are real results from the game:
| Prompt | Typed | Result | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name a capital city in Europe | “Paris” | #1 Paris · 100 pts | The most common answer |
| Name a capital city in Europe | “Pari” | #1 Paris · 100 pts | A small typo still counts |
| Name a capital city in Europe | “Skopje” | Not on the board | Correct, but too rare to be on the board |
| Name a capital city in Europe | “Paris or London” | Rejected, guess not used | Two answers at once is a hedge |
| Name a red fruit | “a red apple” | #1 Apple · 100 pts | Extra words around an answer are fine |
| Name something people lose all the time | “my car keys” | #1 Keys · 100 pts | Specific versions match the general answer |
| Name a fast food item | “French Fries” | #2 Fries · 64 pts | Alternative names count as the same answer |
A guess that names two board answers, such as “Paris or London”, is turned away without using up a guess: pick one. Typing the same miss twice is also ignored.
Noillirk game modes
Daily. 7 prompts, identical for every player, changing at midnight UTC. Your Daily result builds a streak, and the results screen shows what share of today’s players found each top answer.
Classic. 7 random prompts, replay as often as you like on the Noillirk Unlimited page.
Endless. Start with 3 balloons. A miss, pass or timeout pops one; a top answer brings one back, up to 3. The climb ends when the last balloon pops, and there is no height limit.
Tips to climb higher
- Trust the first idea. If it arrived in a second, it probably arrived in a second for most people too.
- Think of the average person, not yourself. Ask what a busy stranger would blurt out, not what you find interesting.
- Plain beats precise. “Dog” beats “labradoodle”; “car keys” and “keys” both land on keys.
- Use misses as information. If your obvious answer missed, you probably misread the restriction. Read the prompt again before guessing.
- Learn the boards. After each prompt, scan the top nine. The habits you see there, like famous examples and everyday objects, repeat across prompts.
Questions about how to play Noillirk
How do you play Noillirk?
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Read each prompt and type the answer you think most people would give. You have 20 seconds and 3 guesses; the higher your answer ranks on the board, the more points you score and the higher your balloon climbs.
What happens if my answer is not on the board?
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It costs one of your 3 guesses and you can try again while time remains. If all 3 miss, or the timer runs out, the prompt scores zero.
Does answering faster give more points in Noillirk?
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No. Points depend only on where your answer sits on the board. The timer is a deadline, not a bonus, so it is worth taking a few seconds to think.
What is a perfect Noillirk score?
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7 top answers in a row: 700 points, which lifts Kril to 14 km, the stratosphere. Endless has no maximum.
Should I pass on a hard prompt?
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Only in Classic or the Daily when you truly have nothing, since passing scores zero. In Endless a pass pops a balloon just like a miss, so it is almost always better to guess.