Missing Vowels shows one plant name with every vowel removed. An underscore marks each vowel the name lost.
A few plants have two words, so this quiz also marks the spaces. A dot sits in each gap between two words.
"S_NFL_W_R" is SUNFLOWER. "CH_RRY · BL_SS_M" is CHERRY BLOSSOM. "_K" is OAK.
A run lasts three minutes. Name as many plants as you can in that time.
How to play
- Read the name in the middle of the screen. Each underscore is one vowel and each dot is one space.
- Type the name of the plant. The game accepts the name as soon as you spell it. You do not press Enter.
- You can type the spaces or leave them out. "sweet potato" and "sweetpotato" both count.
- A correct name scores one point and draws the next plant.
- Select Skip to draw the next plant. A skip costs no point, but it costs time.
- The clock starts on your first keystroke, so you can read the first name first.
- 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 plant of the run and its answer.
What counts in this quiz
- The pool holds 280 plant names in five groups: flowers, trees, fruits, vegetables, and herbs and crops.
- Each run deals 100 puzzles from the pool in a random order, and no pattern repeats inside one run. The highest score is 100.
- Score is one point per plant named. Skipped plants score nothing.
- The leaderboard ranks the number of plants 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 YEW shows as "Y_W".
- Only the exact spelling counts. The mask shows every consonant, so it tells you the letters the answer needs.
- British spellings, as on the rest of the site: aubergine and courgette, not eggplant and zucchini.
- Capital letters do not matter. "oak" and "OAK" both count.
Good to know
- The shortest puzzle in the pool is OAK, which keeps one letter of three.
- The longest is CHRYSANTHEMUM, at 13 letters, and it keeps ten of them.
- Consonants carry most of the information in written English. That is why you can still read a name with no vowels at all.