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How to Play

Fossil Digger is a free daily word game with one twist that changes everything: you're scored on how rare your answer is, not whether it's right.

The one rule

Each prompt asks for something with lots of possible answers — "name a farm animal," "name a country in Africa," "name a Tom Hanks movie." Any correct answer counts. But the fewer people who gave the same answer as you, the deeper your drill sinks into the ground.

Prompt: Name a farm animal.
Say "cow" and you've got plenty of company — a shallow dig. Say "guinea fowl" and almost no one else did — the drill plunges, and you reach an older, rarer layer of the earth.

So the game rewards the answer that's correct and uncommon. It's a daily test of how differently you think from everyone else.

A dig, step by step

  1. Answer the day's prompts. Five quick rounds, 25 seconds each. Rarer answers earn more metres.
  2. See how you compare. After each answer you're shown what everyone else said and how rare yours was.
  3. Hit the bonus round. Pick a category and answer three more questions in it — pure upside, all extra depth.
  4. Brush out your find. The depth you reached decides the era you land in. Brush the dirt away to reveal the creature buried there.
  5. Add it to your collection. Every fossil is a real prehistoric animal that joins your museum.

There's one real dig per day. Come back tomorrow for a fresh set — or replay the last couple of days from the Archive.

How deep can you get?

The drill passes through six layers, newest to oldest: Topsoil, the Ice Age, After the Asteroid, the Cretaceous, the Jurassic, and Deep Time. The deeper you reach, the older and rarer the creature you uncover. There's a full tour of every layer and what lives in it in the Field Guide to the Dig.

Your museum & your crew

Finds pile up into your own natural-history museum. Assemble a whole skeleton and that creature joins your Dig Crew — a cast of characters you can equip and show off. Your rarest finds go on display in the shared Exhibit, where you can add friends and compare collections, and your daily score places you on the leaderboard and the all-time Hall of Fame.

Streaks

Playing on consecutive days builds a streak. Every day you show up earns a little reward, and hitting milestones — 10, 25, 50, 100 days — unlocks exclusive crewmates you can only get by keeping the habit alive. Miss a day and a banked streak freeze can quietly save it. Install the app and switch on the daily reminder so you never break the chain.

No accounts, no catch

There's no sign-up and no password — just open it and dig. Your progress saves on your device and backs itself up automatically, and you can carry it to another device with a museum code. Fossil Digger is free to play, kept running by ads and optional cosmetic extras; the Privacy page lays out exactly what is and isn't stored.

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