Recorded answers
124 recorded answers
How to approach it
Work the sky in layers instead of free-associating. First sweep the physical atmosphere: anything produced by light passing through ice, water droplets, suspended particles or sharp temperature gradients, including effects that appear only at particular hours of the day. Second, list living things that travel through air without being ordinary birds, plus the small flying machines and personal flight devices people have invented. Third, climb outward to objects beyond the atmosphere and to anything briefly crossing it. Write down ten candidates per layer, then strike the ones a general audience would name first, because the scoring rewards obscurity. Keep the phrasing precise: a named phenomenon beats a vague description, and anything that is really just weather or a synonym for the sky itself will not register.
Get a hint
Start with the atmosphere as a stage: light bending, scattering or reflecting off ice crystals, suspended particles and water droplets can put shapes and colours overhead that owe nothing to a solid object.
A little more
Then widen to living things and machines that spend time aloft: tiny creatures ride the currents, and human engineering keeps inventing new ways to leave the ground behind.
One step further
Finally hunt the rare and the brief: split-second optical tricks, faint glows that appear only at certain hours, and sights so obscure that only a specialist would think of them.
Reveal answers 124
- STEVEOne in a Krillion100points
- AirglowDeep Cut85points
- Ballooning spiderDeep Cut85points
- Brocken spectreDeep Cut85points
- Cloud iridescenceDeep Cut85points
- ColugoDeep Cut85points
- ConjunctionDeep Cut85points
- CoronaDeep Cut85points
- Earthquake lightsDeep Cut85points
- False sunriseDeep Cut85points
- Fire whirlDeep Cut85points
- FlogoDeep Cut85points
- Flying carDeep Cut85points
- Flying frogDeep Cut85points
- Flying lizardDeep Cut85points
- Flying snakeDeep Cut85points
- GegenscheinDeep Cut85points
- GloryDeep Cut85points
- Green flashDeep Cut85points
- GyrocopterDeep Cut85points
- IceblinkDeep Cut85points
- JetpackDeep Cut85points
- Laser beamDeep Cut85points
- Light pillarDeep Cut85points
- MayflyDeep Cut85points
- MirageDeep Cut85points
- OrnithopterDeep Cut85points
- St. Elmo's fireDeep Cut85points
- SteamDeep Cut85points
- Sugar gliderDeep Cut85points
- Sun dogDeep Cut85points
- TiltrotorDeep Cut85points
- UranusDeep Cut85points
- Vapor coneDeep Cut85points
- Water skyDeep Cut85points
- Zodiacal lightDeep Cut85points
- Aerial bannerRare60points
- AsteroidRare60points
- BatRare60points
- BeeRare60points
- BlizzardRare60points
- ButterflyRare60points
- ContrailRare60points
- DragonflyRare60points
- Dust devilRare60points
- Dust stormRare60points
- FireflyRare60points
- FlareRare60points
- FlyRare60points
- Flying squirrelRare60points
Why these answers count
Point values tracked rarity rather than plausibility. The lone hundred-point entry is an acronym-named glow in the upper atmosphere, a phenomenon so specialised that most players have never met the term, and the eighty-five band is crowded with material just as niche: optical effects such as Airglow, Cloud iridescence and Sun dog, strange atmospheric events like Earthquake lights, and animals that glide without being birds, among them Colugo and Sugar glider. Each of those requires a second or third pass through the category before it surfaces. The sixty-point tier, by contrast, collects things a curious player reaches quickly once bird and plane are set aside: Contrail, Halo, Galaxy, Firefly, Haze, Hurricane, Blizzard. They are legitimate and specific, yet a huge share of the player base lands on them, so the multiplier stays modest. Nothing in the lower band was wrong; the penalty was familiarity, not accuracy.