Travel words for Alias — three levels

From the suitcase to the customs desk. Lands well with a group that likes telling stories from the road.

A set about the journey: transport, lodging, documents and everything you meet between leaving home and coming back. Half of these words will drag somebody's story out with them — which is fine, that is rather the point.

What makes this set different

Travel is a shared experience with wildly different details. One player remembers a night train, another a queue at passport control. That makes the clues alive: instead of a dictionary meaning people describe their own trip, and the team recognises the situation before the word.

Who this set is for

A group that has actually travelled somewhere — the next town over counts. Half these words pull somebody's story out, and that is the point of the set: it works less as a quiz and more as a prompt to talk. It goes badly with children: most of the middle tier rests on experience they have not had yet.

Passport

Works: “the thing you show at the border.” One situation and the word lands instantly. Does not work: “a document proving identity” — that fits a driving licence, a student card and any badge; the room will work through them until the buzzer.

Transfer

Works through the inconvenience: “when nothing flies direct and you spend four hours in somebody else's airport.” Does not work: “changing transport en route” — too neutral, and the room says stop, connection or simply trip.

Tent

Works through the action: “you put it up to sleep in when there is no hotel nearby.” Does not work: “a fabric dwelling” — it sounds like a riddle and leads to yurt, kennel and sleeping bag. Almost everything in this set is explained through a stage of the journey, not the look of an object.

Where groups go wrong

Players reach for a precise definition, when the set runs on shared experience: everybody remembers queues, delays and lost luggage, and nobody remembers wording. The second trap is telling your own story instead of giving a clue — the word gets lost around the third sentence while the team listens and forgets it is supposed to be guessing. The third is the hard tier, which is full of legal and transport terms that barely land unless you anchor them to a specific moment at an airport or a border.

Anchor the word to a stage of the journey: "the thing you show at the border" gets passport instantly.
For transport, name the feeling rather than the shape: "you lie down to sleep while it moves".
Hard words land through the annoyances — queues, delays, lost luggage are what everyone remembers.

Easy

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

suitcase, bag, backpack, ticket, passport, money, map, compass, road, motorway, bridge, tunnel, station, airport, port, stop, bus, train, plane, ship, ferry, taxi, car, bicycle, hotel, room, key, bed, shower, towel, breakfast, restaurant, cafe, shop, market, souvenir, camera, phone, charger, headphones, sunglasses, hat, shorts, jacket, umbrella, trainers, tent, sleepingbag, torch, knife, water, thermos, sandwich, sea, beach, sand, wave, mountains, forest, river, lake, waterfall, island, desert, city, village, museum, castle, square, street, park, fountain, church, tower, border, visa, queue, currency, exchange, language, dictionary, weather, sun, rain, wind, heat, cold, holiday, vacation, excursion, guide, group, friends, family, memories, postcard, roadside, campfire, sunrise, ferryman

Medium

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

airline, hitchhiking, luggage, booking, brochure, bay, voucher, terminal, voyage, concierge, hostel, deposit, declaration, delta, roadworks, commuter, expedition, reserve, checkin, cabin, canyon, berth, camping, container, cruise, resort, liner, location, itinerary, lighthouse, customs, embankment, rucksack, naturalisation, lodging, viewpoint, goggles, rental, offshore, deck, panorama, guesthouse, gangway, immigration, pass, flight, platform, transfer, chairlift, plan, couchette, plateau, trip, boarding, permit, hike, arrival, shelter, conductor, promotion, farewell, guidebook, registration, departure, roaming, backpacker, saloon, sanatorium, safari, switchback, moneybox, cliff, trail, parking, insurance, steward, giftshop, timetable, gate, transit, shuttle, tourism, tourist, gorge, photographer, dormitory, ridge, charter, trunk, barrier, route, stamp, navigator, fair, crib, yacht, bungalow, geyser, porter, sunbed

Hard

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

accreditation, acclimatisation, apartments, atoll, authenticity, multiday, bathyscaphe, bivouac, freightflow, cyclotourism, verticality, involuntary, endurance, secondment, visarequirement, drainage, gastronomic, geographic, geolocation, hydrogeology, glamping, downshifting, deportation, destination, jetlag, discomfort, dispatching, roadbuilding, evacuation, ecotourism, tourguide, expatriate, extreme, ethnography, development, suburban, roundtrip, wintering, wayside, individual, insider, infrastructure, funicular, cadastral, cabotage, cartography, kayaking, quotas, cluster, coworking, comfortable, consulate, continental, frontier, crosscultural, landscaping, legalisation, areastudies, logistics, routing, migration, intercontinental, multimodal, navigation, urgent, nonresident, nomadism, overlanding, orienteering, pilgrimage, passportisation, carrier, reinsurance, planning, traveller, indicator, embassy, borderland, checkpoint, repatriation, conservation, retreat, reception, selfisolation, seasonality, caving, standardisation, insurer, sublease, overland, territorial, crossborder, transcontinental, trekking, chartering, hostelling, civilisational, schengen, stratification, visaissuance