Krillion Recorded answers
997 recorded answers
How to approach it
Work from demography outwards. Rank the world's major naming systems by the number of people who actually carry them, then ask which individual forms sit at the very top of each one, because a name only needs to be frequent inside a large pool to survive a thousand-entry cut-off. Cross out anything globally famous: those are the picks every player makes, and they pay the least. Then favour the awkward middle, a form that is unremarkable in its home region but almost never encountered by outsiders, especially a clipped or transliterated spelling. Verify the candidate is a given name rather than a surname or a title, check that the spelling is a real recorded variant, and submit it without adding a second element.
Get a hint
Start with population arithmetic: any naming pool tied to a very large population is bound to place dozens of entries inside a thousand-name cut-off.
A little more
Steer away from the names that turn up constantly in mainstream news and entertainment; the middle and lower bands of such a list are dominated by forms that are everyday somewhere else and striking where you live.
One step further
Short one- and two-syllable forms, including clipped transliterations that look unfinished to a mainstream reader, cluster near the bottom, so an odd-looking minimal spelling is a serious candidate.
Reveal answers 997
- BharatDeep Cut85points
- BibiDeep Cut85points
- BinDeep Cut85points
- BlessingDeep Cut85points
- BrigitteDeep Cut85points
- CaDeep Cut85points
- ChandraDeep Cut85points
- ChantalDeep Cut85points
- ChaoDeep Cut85points
- ChengDeep Cut85points
- ChiDeep Cut85points
- ChristopheDeep Cut85points
- ChunDeep Cut85points
- ChunhuaDeep Cut85points
- ChunyanDeep Cut85points
- CongDeep Cut85points
- DaryaDeep Cut85points
- DiDeep Cut85points
- DilipDeep Cut85points
- DineshDeep Cut85points
- DipakDeep Cut85points
- DmitriyDeep Cut85points
- DmitryDeep Cut85points
- DongmeiDeep Cut85points
- DungDeep Cut85points
- DurgaDeep Cut85points
- EiDeep Cut85points
- EkaterinaDeep Cut85points
- ElviraDeep Cut85points
- EmanDeep Cut85points
- EmineDeep Cut85points
- EsterDeep Cut85points
- EvgeniyDeep Cut85points
- FaisalDeep Cut85points
- FaridaDeep Cut85points
- FarzanaDeep Cut85points
- FatemehDeep Cut85points
- FatoumataDeep Cut85points
- FranciscaDeep Cut85points
- GalinaDeep Cut85points
- GangDeep Cut85points
- GangaDeep Cut85points
- GerardoDeep Cut85points
- GerhardDeep Cut85points
- GhulamDeep Cut85points
- GilbertoDeep Cut85points
- GitaDeep Cut85points
- GladysDeep Cut85points
- GopalDeep Cut85points
- GulDeep Cut85points
Why these answers count
The reveal carries 997 entries and 867 of them clear sixty points, so the scale is compressed near the ceiling and almost any genuine member of the global thousand gets paid something. A single slot at one hundred went to Krzysztof, which reads as the least guessable qualifying entry rather than the rarest name overall. The eighty-five band is enormous, 492 answers, and it is populated by Abdel, Ayşe, Abubakar and Aminata, forms that are everyday across large populations yet rarely surface in mainstream Western media. That width is the useful part: the band is broad enough to be hittable and obscure enough to pay close to the maximum. The 374 answers on sixty points sit at the opposite end, the comfortable picks that occur to nearly everyone and therefore earn the least. Rarity pays because points track how few players reach a given answer, so the profitable zone is a name that is ordinary somewhere populous and unfamiliar elsewhere.