How to Play Noillirk

The game in one breath

Noillirk gives you seven prompts — things like "Name a country with the letter Z in its name" or "Name a fermented food". For each prompt you type one answer against a 25-second clock. Every answer is pre-scored by how rare it is. Common answers score 10 and barely wet your fins; the rarest answer in the bank scores 100 and drops you a full kilometre. Add up seven answers: points become depth at ten metres per point, and the deepest possible dive — the perfect 700 — touches the trench floor at 7,000m.

That's the whole machine. Everything below is how to drive it well.

Step by step: your first dive

1. Press BEGIN THE DIVE. The start panel shows the six tiers, your streak and your best depth inside the scene itself — the surface of the mirror water, boat bobbing, diver waiting. Choose Daily (one shot, shared with the world) or Unlimited (endless practice).
2. Count down 3 · 2 · 1 — descending. The numerals fall as you sink, because in the mirror even the countdown goes down. When it lands on the first prompt, your 25 seconds start.
3. Read the prompt. Then reverse. Your brain will offer an answer instantly — that answer is Plankton, worth 10, and everyone else is typing it too. Spend the first five seconds asking what the crowd will answer, and the next fifteen swimming past it.
4. Type and submit. Spelling close to a banked answer? The game may offer a "did you mean" lifeline — take it or trust yourself. An answer outside the bank scores zero, flashes, and lets you try again while the clock still runs.
5. Watch yourself sink. On submit, the camera follows you down: bubbles stream, tier threshold lines sweep past, real-world depth marks appear (the deepest scuba dive ever at 332m, the Titanic at 3,800m), and your answer placard glows in its tier colour as the depth counts up in real time.
6. Read the reveal. Tier, points, a line of flavour, and where you now sit in the ocean's zones — Sunlight, Twilight, Midnight, Abyssal, Hadal. Seven prompts, seven reveals.
7. Surface and take stock. The results panel reads your dive back through the mirror ranks — Surface Reflection up to True Noillirk — with a per-prompt breakdown, your percentile against the typical diver, any achievements unlocked, and a share button that copies your result for friends to beat.

A worked example round: three prompts, three ladders

Rules read differently once you've seen a real bank breathe. These ladders are taken from the actual game — this is what the crowd does, prompt by prompt:

"Name a capital city in Europe." The brain's first delivery is Paris, London or Rome — Plankton, 10 points, the surface. The quiz-trained reach for Madrid or Berlin and discover the Too Clever shelf (15): famous enough that every quizzer "escapes" to them at once. Lisbon and Vienna swim with the school (30). Then the map opens up: Riga and Vilnius are Rare (60), Tirana and Skopje are Deep Cut (85), and the divers who pictured principalities instead of postcards land Vaduz or San Marino — One in a Noillirk, 100.

"Name a type of pasta." Spaghetti is not an answer, it's a reflex — 10 points. Macaroni feels one step cleverer and is exactly that: Too Clever, 15. Linguine and Fettuccine school along at 30. Penne and Fusilli — the shapes people can see but can't quite name at speed — are Rare at 60. Farfalle and Rigatoni are Deep Cut (85). And the gem shelf belongs to Orecchiette and Bucatini: the pastas you have to have ordered, cooked or argued about to reach for in 25 seconds. One in a Noillirk, 100.

"Name a country with the letter Z in its name." Zambia and Zimbabwe, 10. Czechia and Belize, 15 — yes, Belize is the trap; half the room "discovers" it simultaneously. Switzerland and New Zealand, 30. Mozambique and Tanzania, 60. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, 85. And at the very back of the alphabet drawer: Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kyrgyzstan, 100 each. Notice the pattern across all three ladders: the gem is never a word you don't know. It's a word you know fourth — and the game is the discipline of thinking fourth.

The clock, skips and second chances

25 seconds is shorter than you think and longer than you need. The ring around the timer drains from violet to amber to red. If the clock empties, the prompt scores zero and the dive moves on — no penalty beyond the lost prompt. If a prompt has you completely stuck, Skip (button, or the S key while you aren't typing) banks the same zero faster and saves your nerves for the next six. There is no shame in a skip; there is only shame in donating 25 seconds to a prompt about pasta shapes you were never going to win.

Blank answers, timeouts and skips all read as Missed. One miss doesn't sink a dive — a 600 with a miss is still Mirror Deep — but the perfect 700 demands seven scoring answers, and that's the sport.

The one rule that isn't written on the panel

You are not being tested on knowledge. You are being tested on what other people know. The bank is a census of the crowd's imagination: the first answer a thousand strangers would give is Plankton; the answer only one of them would give is One in a Noillirk. Winning players develop a reflex — hear prompt, picture the crowd's three answers, reject all three, dive. Psychologists call it perspective-taking; the mirror calls it thinking backwards, and it is a trainable skill: the strategy guide is built entirely around it.

A corollary worth tattooing on your forearm: Too Clever (15) is the most dangerous tier in the game. It's the answer that feels obscure but isn't — the "deep cut" every film fan, geography nerd and food snob reaches for simultaneously. If your answer makes you feel smart in the first three seconds, it's probably Too Clever. Real depth feels slightly uncomfortable: Vaduz, natto, siphonophore. Uncomfortable is where the points live.

Five mistakes every new diver makes

• Typing the first thought. The first answer that arrives is Plankton by definition — the crowd's speed is the whole game. Give yourself two full seconds of silence before your fingers move; the dive is won in that pause.
• Falling in love with the clever pick. If an answer arrives fast and makes you feel smart, it is probably the Too Clever shelf (15) wearing a disguise. Distrust the glow; the uncomfortable answer is usually the deeper one.
• Gem-hunting into a zero. Chasing 100 and typing something the bank doesn't carry scores the same as a blank. A banked Schooler (30) beats a heroic guess almost every time — depth is arithmetic, and zeroes don't add.
• Donating the clock to a dead prompt. Sinking all 25 seconds into a prompt you were never going to win starves the six you could. Skip at second ten on a hopeless prompt and spend the change where it pays.
• Refusing the lifeline. When the game offers a spelling correction, it is telling you your answer exists in the bank at full tier value. Pride edits; divers confirm. Take the corrected answer and the points with it.

After the dive

Your daily score locks at the surface. Streaks grow when you finish a daily on consecutive days and reset when you miss one. Personal bests are kept per mode — Daily, Unlimited and each pack separately — so experiments never pollute the record that matters. Achievements unlock for milestones of style, not just volume: first Deep Cut, first gem, a seven-day streak. Everything is stored on your own device; there is no account and nothing to sign up for.

Missed yesterday? The answers are published the moment the day turns, and replay lets you re-dive any past set for practice. Want a witness? Challenge a friend to the same seven prompts and settle it properly.