How to play Cosmillion

The sixty-second version

A Cosmillion launch is one run through seven prompts. Every prompt asks you to name one thing that fits a category — “Name a fruit”, “Name a word that sounds made up”, “Name something you have pretended to understand”. You get 25 seconds and one answer per prompt. When you submit, Mission Control reveals which rarity band your answer came from and how much thrust it earned.

Rarity is the whole game. The obvious answer is always valid, and it always scores least. A lateral answer scores more. The answer that makes you grin and mutter “I can't believe that counts” scores most. Seven perfect answers score 700 and send your rocket past the asteroid belt into the deep space beyond.

A launch, step by step

1. 01

   Open today's launch

   One launch is available per local day. It is the same seven prompts for every player everywhere, so scores are comparable. A new launch appears at midnight in your own time zone.

2. 02

   Read the prompt fast

   The prompt appears with a running 25-second timer. A category tag tells you which part of the answer bank it came from, but not how many answers exist or how hard it is.

3. 03

   Type one answer

   The input is focused automatically. Press Enter to submit. You cannot buy time, retry, or submit a second answer for the same prompt.

4. 04

   Read the reveal

   The reveal shows the rarity tier, the canonical spelling of your answer if it matched the board, the points it earned, and a one-line flavour message. Press Enter to climb.

5. 05

   Climb

   Each answer moves the rocket higher through nine altitude bands. The climb is short; the next prompt is already waiting. The timer restarts at 25.

6. 06

   Compare and come back

   The result screen shows your total, your best answer, your streak and your rank for the day. Share a spoiler-free result or send a challenge link, then return tomorrow.

Scoring, tier by tier

Every prompt has a curated board of valid answers. Each answer on that board sits in one of six tiers. The tier estimates how many players would reach for that answer — not whether the answer is correct. Every answer on the board is correct.

If an answer is not on the board, it is rejected: the clock keeps running, the input clears and you can try again. Only accepted answers score — typing something random earns nothing. If the 25 seconds run out, the round scores zero and the reveal shows one rare answer that was waiting on the board.

What 700 actually means

Seven prompts at 100 points each is a perfect 700. It is deliberately rare. To hit 700 you would need to land a COSMILLION answer seven times in a row, in 25 seconds each, without defaulting to the obvious choice once. Most launches end between 150 and 350 points; anything above 400 is a strong flight, and a single 100-point reveal is the story you tell your group chat afterwards.

The scoring curve is built to make that legible. Two 100-point answers beat seven 10-point answers. You are not rewarded for filling the board quickly; you are rewarded for reaching past the first answer that arrives. That is why a three-minute daily game stays interesting after a hundred days: the ladder is different every prompt, and you only find out where you landed after you commit.

The five ways to play

The daily launch is the ritual, but Cosmillion is not a one-run game. Everything below is free and open from the home screen.

• Daily launch. Seven prompts, once a day, logged. This is the only mode that affects your streak, your best and your daily history.
• Archive. Every launch from the first 365 days is available from day one. Play a day you missed, or replay a launch for fun without changing your streak.
• Themed packs. Seven categories — Daily Life, Food & Drink, Nature, World, Culture, Wordplay and Wild Card — played in short chapters. Useful when you want a particular flavour of prompt instead of a mixed launch.
• Unlimited. Random prompts, as many runs as you like never touching your daily record. Good for warming up, or for testing a theory about how rare your instincts are.
• Logbook. Your streak, best score, history and every rare answer you have discovered, stored locally on your device. It is a private mission record, not a profile.

Streaks, challenge links and the logbook

Finish a daily launch and your streak increases by one. Miss a local day and it resets to zero; Cosmillion will not nag you about it. The streak is a gentle ritual marker, not a subscription trap. Archive, pack, unlimited and challenge runs never change it.

When a launch ends, you can copy a challenge link. It contains the launch number and your score, but no answers and no prompts. Send it to a friend: they play the same seven prompts, then see whether they beat you. There is no sign-up on either side, and the link spoils nothing.

The logbook is where the long game lives. It records your best launch, your average, your streak history, badges, and a list of the rare answers you have found. Because it all lives in your browser's local storage, it belongs to you — and only you. If you clear site data, it goes; see the privacy page for the full story.

Seven habits of annoyingly good pilots

• Reject your first answer on purpose. It is almost always a TOURIST answer. Naming it silently and then moving one step sideways is the single biggest scoring habit.
• Think in specifics. “Dog” is safe; “Borzoi” is a choice. Specific nouns, places, dishes and brands tend to live deeper on the board than categories.
• Use the whole prompt. “Name a word that sounds made up” is not answered best with “onomatopoeia”. It is answered best with a word you only half believe exists.
• Trust the weird-but-true answer. Cosmillion boards are curated by humans. Real, surprising answers are exactly the ones the COSMILLION tier exists for.
• Do not panic at ten seconds. The timer is short but one answer is one answer. A deep answer typed at five seconds still scores 100.
• Play the pack that scares you. Wordplay and Wild Card prompts train lateral thinking faster than another round of food prompts.
• Read the reveal. The flavour line tells you what the tier means. Over a week, that feedback recalibrates what “rare” feels like.

How to play: questions, answered