Space words for Alias — planets, rockets, stars

Planets, rockets, stars and everything an astronaut sees through the porthole. For a night of dreamers.

A set about what is overhead: planets and stars, rockets and orbits, life on the station and what a telescope shows from a balcony. No names of astronauts or spacecraft — the group plays with words, not dates.

Who this set is for

It is built for a group that has looked up at a starry sky at least once and asked what is there. Rocket and spacesuit go instantly, while perigee or eclipse already call on the school astronomy somebody still remembers.

Who this set is for

A group with children in their space phase and adults who never quite left theirs. Anyone clears the easy level, the medium one plays well at a mixed table, and the hard one — parsec, singularity, heliopause — wants at least one person who read past the school textbook. It lands well after a planetarium visit or a clear night out of town.

Weightlessness

Works: “the thing that makes water gather into a ball on the station and a spoon float away.” One picture from a station video gives the word in a second. Does not work: “a state in which gravity is not felt” — correct, but the group will say space, flight, orbit and lose the time.

Crater

Works: “a dent on the Moon you can see even with binoculars, left by an impact.” Does not work: “a depression on the surface of a planet” — the group will try valley, canyon and crack first. Explain landforms through where they came from.

Eclipse

Works: “it goes dark in the middle of the day because the Moon stepped in front of the Sun.” Does not work: “an astronomical phenomenon” — every word in this set starts that way, and the group will run through comets, meteors and the northern lights. Start from what a person sees in the street.

Where groups go wrong

The first trap is numbers: “fourth from the Sun”, “the biggest planet”. Not everyone remembers the order, and the explainer wonders why the room is silent. Go through a feature instead: “the red one”, “the one with rings”. The second is textbook definitions: physics words invite being explained as in class, while the group sits on a sofa. Say what it means in practice or what it looks like. The third is names: Gagarin, Armstrong, Musk. The set keeps away from them on purpose, but players bring them in themselves, and the word rocket turns into a quiz.

Explain planets through a feature, not a number: "the one with rings" is faster than "sixth from the Sun".
Phenomena go through what a person sees outside: "it went dark at noon" leads to eclipse.
Ground scientific terms in an example from the station or the telescope, not a textbook definition.

Easy

Familiar words that land on the first clue. For warming up, for kids and for mixed groups.

space, star, sun, moon, earth, planet, rocket, astronaut, spacesuit, helmet, sky, night, telescope, satellite, orbit, flight, launch, countdown, landing, station, crew, captain, pilot, spaceship, alien, comet, meteor, asteroid, crater, dust, rock, fire, smoke, engine, fuel, button, antenna, radio, signal, map, compass, food, tube, water, air, oxygen, cold, heat, weightlessness, jump, step, footprint, flag, photo, window, hatch, seat, belt, robot, rover, constellation, galaxy, universe, cloud, wind, ice, explosion, light, darkness, shadow, ball, ring, liftoff, speed, height, weight, dream, fairytale, starry, distant, round, hot, empty, fly, fall, shine, spin, nose, wing, tail, parachute, capsule, plane, sunrise, sunset, fog, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus

Medium

Takes a few sentences and some imagination. The default setting for an ordinary evening.

Mercury, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, astronomer, observatory, planetarium, binoculars, lens, mirror, eclipse, meteorite, fireball, nebula, cluster, dwarf, giant, supernova, gravity, vacuum, atmosphere, stratosphere, ozone, radiation, axis, equator, pole, hemisphere, meridian, globe, zodiac, horoscope, astrology, module, stage, compartment, airlock, docking, porthole, navigation, trajectory, acceleration, overload, centrifuge, simulator, probe, lander, shuttle, spaceport, hangar, splashdown, touchdown, spacewalk, mission, expedition, explorer, scientist, engineer, designer, controller, rotation, tide, solstice, equinox, phase, crescent, horizon, zenith, twilight, dawn, dusk, aurora, orbital, lunar, solar, stellar, cosmic, booster, thruster, tank, payload, cargo, greenhouse, experiment, sample, radar, laser, beacon, transmitter, receiver, frequency, delay, flyby, reentry, shield, cosmonaut, visor, glove, tether, debris

Hard

Rare or abstract words. More failed rounds, and more laughing at them.

parsec, heliopause, singularity, perigee, apogee, perihelion, aphelion, ecliptic, precession, nutation, parallax, spectrum, spectrograph, interferometer, radiotelescope, exoplanet, protostar, pulsar, quasar, magnetar, accretion, collapse, hypernova, corona, chromosphere, photosphere, prominence, flare, ionosphere, thermosphere, mesosphere, exosphere, magnetosphere, heliosphere, cosmology, astrophysics, astrometry, ephemeris, almanac, astrolabe, sextant, quadrant, gnomon, libration, sidereal, synodic, ellipse, eccentricity, inclination, apsis, node, terminator, albedo, luminosity, redshift, antimatter, neutrino, positron, geostationary, retrograde, suborbital, thermonuclear, thrust, impulse, telemetry, astronautics, cosmonautics, astrobiology, terraforming, colonisation, gyroscope, accelerometer, heliocentrism, geocentrism, regolith, cryovolcano, meteoroid, micrometeorite, planetesimal, protoplanet, interstellar, intergalactic, wormhole, multiverse, occultation, transit, conjunction, opposition, elongation, coma, chondrite, spectroscopy, photometry, ablation, coronagraph, planisphere, azimuth, declination, epoch, aeon