Missing Vowels shows the name of a musical instrument with every vowel removed. An underscore marks each vowel the word lost.
"G__T_R" is GUITAR. "TR_MB_N_" is TROMBONE.
A run lasts three minutes. Name as many instruments as you can in that time.
How to play
- Read the word in the middle of the screen. Each underscore is one vowel.
- Type the instrument's name. The game accepts the name as soon as you spell it — you do not press Enter.
- A correct name scores one point and draws the next instrument.
- Select Skip to draw the next instrument. A skip costs no point, but it costs time.
- The clock starts on your first keystroke, so you can read the first word first.
- The bar under the header drains as the clock runs. It turns red for the last 20 seconds.
- The game saves your progress. You can close the page and continue within one hour.
- Select Review words on the result screen to see every word of the run and its answer.
What counts in this quiz
- The pool holds 68 instruments — strings, keyboards, woodwind, brass, percussion and folk instruments from around the world.
- Every instrument is one word. "French horn" and "double bass" are two words, so they are not in the pool.
- No two words in the pool share a pattern, so the pool makes 68 different puzzles. That is the highest score.
- Each run deals the puzzles in a random order, and no pattern repeats inside one run.
- Score is one point per instrument named. Skipped instruments score nothing.
- The leaderboard ranks the number of instruments named in the three minutes.
What's not included — and why
- The five vowels are A, E, I, O and U. Y is a consonant here, so XYLOPHONE shows as "XYL_PH_N_".
- Only the exact spelling counts. The mask shows every consonant, so it tells you the letters the answer needs.
- Accented names are written plain. The pool spells "Cajon" and "Bodhran", and the game accepts a guess with or without the accent.
- Capital letters do not matter. "violin" and "VIOLIN" both count.
Good to know
- The longest word in the pool is GLOCKENSPIEL, at 12 letters.
- The shortest have four letters: HARP, OBOE, TUBA, GONG, LUTE, LYRE, KOTO and ERHU.
- The hardest words are the ones with many vowels. OBOE shows as "_B__" and keeps one letter of four.
- One instrument in the pool is played without any touch at all: the THEREMIN. The player's hands move in the air near two antennas.