Krillion Recorded answers
423 recorded answers
How to approach it
Work outward from context rather than from a mental picture of one implement. List the environments where ground is opened — vegetable plot, building site, mine, archaeological trench, riverbed, shoreline, frozen surface — and ask what each one actually needs. Then split those needs by the force that drives them: human muscle, animal traction, engine, water. Next split by the material being cut, because loose sand, heavy clay, rock, silt and ice behave nothing alike. Only then push from the generic toward the specific: compound names, trade jargon, regional folk terms and machine variants all live in this space, and the scoring rewards that specificity. Keep a running scratch list and add every variant you can justify, since two near-synonyms rarely pay the same.
Get a hint
Start with the settings rather than the objects: a small domestic plot, a large civil works site, an underground seam, a dredged channel and a tidal flat each demand different equipment.
A little more
Then narrow by how the ground is opened: some implements are pushed by a person, others are driven by an engine, and a third family is lowered from above or towed through water.
One step further
Finally sort by material and depth, since loose sand, packed clay, frozen soil, submerged silt and solid rock all call for a different edge, head or mounting.
Reveal answers 423
- Round-point shovelRare60points
- Sand diggerRare60points
- Skid steerRare60points
- Snow shovelRare60points
- Soil scoopRare60points
- Square-point shovelRare60points
- Steam shovelRare60points
- TillerRare60points
- TransplanterRare60points
- TrencherRare60points
- Trenching shovelRare60points
- Trunk shovelRare60points
- Tunnel boring machineRare60points
- WeederRare60points
- BulldozerSchooler30points
- DrillSchooler30points
- ExcavatorSchooler30points
- JackhammerSchooler30points
- SpadeSchooler30points
- TrowelSchooler30points
- HoePlankton10points
- PickaxePlankton10points
- ShovelPlankton10points
Why these answers count
The reveal sorts into three clear price bands. The forty answers that took 60 points were the plain, everyday class names a player types without thinking — correct, instantly reachable, and therefore cheap. The 370 answers at 85 points are the real middle: precise, often compound or trade-specific names such as Archaeology trowel, Bucket-wheel excavator, Cable tool rig, Cutter suction dredger, Direct push rig, Piston corer and Shelby tube. Each is unmistakably a real implement, yet each sits far enough from the reflex answer that it pays substantially more. Above them stands a single 100-point entry, Golf hole cutter, a narrow single-purpose specialist that almost nobody reaches unless they deliberately hunt the obscure corners of the category. Rarity, not plausibility, sets the payout here: being right in a way thousands of others are also right earns little, while a defensible oddity earns most. Breadth of plausible guesses matters more than depth on any one of them.