Wormillion › How to play
How to play Wormillion
Ten rounds. Thirty seconds each. Name any real place that fits the prompt - the more obscure it is, the deeper your worm digs and the more you score.
The idea
Everyone knows the Nile. Nobody digs deep on the Nile. Wormillion scores a place by how obscure it is - measured in monthly English-Wikipedia pageviews, not size or population - so the answer that pays is the one you know that most people don’t. Lake Baikal is a fraction of the Caspian’s area, but plenty of people read about it; a mid-sized African lake almost nobody visits the page for pays out far more.
A round
- A prompt appears: Name a river. Later rounds add a condition: Name a river with a T in it.
- Type a place. Spelling is corrected, not punished - the real spelling is shown.
- If it fits, your worm digs a distance set by the answer’s obscurity, and you score between 100 and 1,000 points.
- If it doesn’t, you’re told why and can keep guessing until the clock runs out. Wrong answers cost nothing.
- Stuck? Skip. It scores nothing, exactly as if the clock had run out.
Scoring
| Obscurity | Gem | Shared as | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0% | 💀 | The most looked-up place in its category. The worm is not pleased. | |
| under 25% | 🟫 | A household name. Safe, shallow. | |
| 25–50% | 🟧 | Well known. | |
| 50–70% | 🟨 | Off the map. A real dig. | |
| 70–90% | 🟩 | A deep cut. | |
| 90% and up | ⭐ | One in Wormillion: the jackpot tier. Nearly the maximum. | |
| 100% | 💎 | The most obscure place in the category. The full 1,000. | |
| miss | ⬜ | Timed out or skipped. |
A condition on a prompt narrows what is accepted; it never changes scoring, which is always against the whole category. A river in Europe scores what it would on a plain river round.
Today’s dig and the Marathon
Today’s dig is the same ten prompts for everyone that day, once a day, turning over at midnight on your clock. After it you get a share button (a ten-square grid, one per round, coloured by obscurity), your streak, a review of every prompt with the rarest answer it would have taken, and how your dig compares with everyone else’s that day. Only Today’s dig counts on the weekly board.
A Marathon is one continuous dig of 42:12. There is no clock on each prompt, only the race clock: answer as many as you can, skip what you can’t, and your depth is your score. Each right answer digs 10 to 300 m by how obscure it is. Run as many marathons as you like; marathoners are ranked by their deepest marathon ever, on the Marathon board. The day’s first marathon brings the full rewards: XP, relics, and, when you’re signed in, a chest at the aid station every 7 minutes. Later marathons that day count for your best and your rank only. Signed in, you also get a finisher’s chest for every marathon you run to the end with ten answers or more, and a chest for every new best; through the day each kind starts at gold, then iron, then wood. When you’re signed in, a new best also lets you leave a short note at that depth, for everyone who digs that deep.
Levels and the leaderboard
Every daily dig you finish, and the day’s first marathon, earns XP - up to 150 for each answer in a daily, more for more obscure ones - and takes you down through twelve ranks, from Sprout to Antipodean, most in three tiers. Badges are collected on the way; Ranks & badges lists them all. Sign in to keep your progress on every device, then choose a name and your daily digs count on the weekly leaderboard: the metres of the week’s digs added up, Monday to Sunday, with medals for the top three. (Weeks before 2 November added up points.)
Spelling
Three passes, cheapest first: an exact match, a match ignoring filler words (“Everest” finds Mount Everest), and finally a fuzzy match within a budget that scales with the name’s length. Three guards keep it honest: short names get no slack at all, a tie between two different places is refused rather than guessed, and the budget comes from the name proper, not the generic word around it - “Lake Tåkern” gets the one edit of “Tåkern”, so a lake the bank lacks is refused rather than corrected to Lake Vänern.
Questions
What is Wormillion?
A free daily geography game. Ten prompts, thirty seconds each: name a real place that fits - a river, a lake, a mountain, an island, a country, a capital, a city, a desert, a sea. The more obscure your answer, the deeper your worm digs and the more points you score. No sign-up needed, no ads, nothing to install.
How is obscurity measured?
By how many people look the place up: its monthly English-Wikipedia pageviews. Not size, not population. The Nile pulls tens of thousands of readers a month, so nobody digs deep on the Nile; a mid-sized river almost nobody reads about pays out far more. Every place in the bank carries the average of 59 complete days of view counts, so one news cycle can’t make a place look famous for good.
What counts as a jackpot?
An answer at 90% obscurity or more within its category - “one in Wormillion”. A jackpot earns a high score and a deep dig; only the single most obscure place in a category pays the full 1,000 and digs the full 600 m.
What happens on a misspelling?
It is corrected, not rejected. Type “Kilimanjro” and you get Kilimanjaro, with the real spelling shown. Short names get no slack, and if two different places are equally close the answer is refused rather than guessed. “Everest” finds Mount Everest, “Harbour” finds Harbor.
Do wrong answers cost anything?
No. An unrecognised answer, a place from the wrong category or one outside the prompt’s scope costs nothing but time - the game tells you why and you keep guessing. A place in another category gets a nudge (“Auckland is a non-capital city; this round wants a capital city”).
What is the difference between Today’s dig and a Marathon?
Today’s dig is the same ten prompts for everyone that day, once a day, turning over at midnight on your clock - the one to compare with friends, with a share grid, a streak and a comparison against everyone else who dug that day. A Marathon is one continuous dig of 42:12 with no clock on each prompt: answer as many as you can, and your depth is your score. Run as many as you like; marathoners are ranked by their deepest marathon ever, on the Marathon board. Only Today’s dig counts on the weekly board, which adds up its metres.
What do the prompts look like?
Plain rounds ask for a river, lake or another category. Conditions can narrow the answer to a country, a region, a hemisphere, a size threshold or a name containing a letter. A condition narrows what is accepted; scoring is always against the whole category.
What is Skip?
A button under the answer row that gives the round up at once. It costs exactly what letting the clock run out costs: no points, no dig.
Where do the places come from?
Every entry is a real place linked to an English Wikipedia article, checked against public Wikidata records and their English Wikipedia articles. Nothing is invented. The current bank covers nine categories; the Places pages list every accepted answer and its source.
How deep can a dig go?
The strata are Topsoil, Subsoil, Clay, Bedrock, Deep Rock, Mantle and Core. In Today’s dig every right answer digs 100 to 600 m - 100 for the best-known place in its category, 600 for the most obscure - so ten perfect answers reach 6,000 m. The Core starts at 3,800, so a strong run gets there without being perfect. A Marathon digs on past the Core, through the Outer Core, the Inner Core, the Centre of the Earth and the Far Side to the Antipodes at 42,195 m.