Space Word Search

These grids are filled from the night sky and the missions sent into it. All eight planets are in the list, along with moons such as TITAN, EUROPA and GANYMEDE, and the words of a launch day: COUNTDOWN, BOOSTER, LIFTOFF and ORBIT.

Space words carry some of the rarest letters in the alphabet. QUASAR and EQUINOX bring a Q, GALAXY and EQUINOX an X, and ZENITH a Z. The filler draws letters by how often they turn up in English, so those rare ones are almost always part of a real word; spotting one is often the quickest way into a hidden name.

A few words hide inside others. STAR is part of STARDUST, and MOON is part of MOONWALK, so the two are never on the same board, since the shorter one would be found twice. PLANET and PLANETARIUM, and ORBIT and ORBITER, follow the same rule.

The longest names, OBSERVATORY and PLANETARIUM, are too long for the smaller grids and wait for Hard, where a word can also run backwards, as if you were reading the stars in a mirror.