Recorded answers
54 recorded answers
How to approach it
Generation and filtering are separate jobs, and doing them in that order keeps you from stalling. Sweep subcategories one at a time — tree and vine fruit, cane and bush fruit, roots and tubers, leaf crops, stem vegetables, sea vegetables, culinary herbs, and borrowed or dialect market words — writing down every candidate however odd it looks. Then apply the ear test: say each one aloud and count beats, throwing out anything that needs a second beat, a plural ending or a companion word to make sense. Ignore spelling, since written length says little about spoken rhythm. Finally, order the survivors from everyday to obscure and submit the strangest one you are confident about, because the pay-out rises the fewer players land on the same word.
Get a hint
Begin with the shortest produce words you might hear shouted across a market, then widen the search into rural and foraging speech where names are clipped, old and often borrowed.
A little more
Test candidates by ear rather than by eye: a long spelling can collapse into a single beat, and a short one may carry a vowel that turns it into two.
One step further
The deepest seam is regional and coastal vocabulary — hedgerow fruit, shoreline edibles, farm and garden terms that never make it onto supermarket signage — plus a few loanwords kept almost unchanged.
Reveal answers 54
- SloeOne in a Krillion100points
- BaelDeep Cut85points
- BerDeep Cut85points
- CepDeep Cut85points
- CheDeep Cut85points
- ChouDeep Cut85points
- CosDeep Cut85points
- CressDeep Cut85points
- CrosneDeep Cut85points
- DockDeep Cut85points
- DulseDeep Cut85points
- GacDeep Cut85points
- GageDeep Cut85points
- GeanDeep Cut85points
- GimDeep Cut85points
- GuarDeep Cut85points
- HawDeep Cut85points
- HipDeep Cut85points
- JackDeep Cut85points
- JuteDeep Cut85points
- MâcheDeep Cut85points
- NanceDeep Cut85points
- PokeDeep Cut85points
- QuinceDeep Cut85points
- RabeDeep Cut85points
- RampDeep Cut85points
- ScapeDeep Cut85points
- SorbDeep Cut85points
- WhortDeep Cut85points
- WrackDeep Cut85points
- YampDeep Cut85points
- ChardRare60points
- ChiveRare60points
- CukeRare60points
- GourdRare60points
- KelpRare60points
- LeekRare60points
- SproutsRare60points
- SpudRare60points
- SwedeRare60points
- BeanSchooler30points
- BeetSchooler30points
- DateSchooler30points
- FigSchooler30points
- KaleSchooler30points
- PeaSchooler30points
- SquashSchooler30points
- YamSchooler30points
- CornPlankton10points
- GrapePlankton10points
Why these answers count
Because the pay-out tracks scarcity, the results read backwards from a shopping list. All eight of the plainest kitchen words — Chive, Cress, Cuke, Gourd, Kelp, Quince, Spud, Swede — sat on the 60 floor, since a word that comes to mind instantly comes to everyone else's too. The crowded middle is the interesting part: Bael, Ber, Cep, Cos, Crosne, Dock, Dulse, Gac, Gage, Gean, Gim, Guar, Haw, Hip, Jack, Mâche, Nance, Poke, Ramp, Scape, Sorb, Whort, Wrack and Yamp share 85 points, twenty-four answers stacked on one tier, which is what a band looks like when plenty of players reach it but nobody rushes there. Above them sits exactly one answer, Sloe, alone at 100. The pattern is consistent: a pick recognisable enough to be accepted yet unusual enough that few rivals produce it captures nearly all the value, and any hint of everydayness costs the top quarter of the scale. Thirty-three of the fifty recorded answers cleared 60; the other seventeen fell short.