Vowel Stealer

Vowel Stealer is a free online missing vowels game: a thief has stolen every A, E, I, O and U from a famous phrase, and it is your job to put them back. What is left on the case card looks like BR__K TH_ _C_ or P__C_ _F C_K_. Read the consonants, work out the saying, then fill the blanks from left to right before the phrase's own timer runs out. It is a quick guess the phrase game built on idioms, proverbs and everyday sayings, and it plays in your browser on a phone or a computer with no download and no sign-up. If you like word games that test how well you know the language rather than how many obscure words you can spell, this one is for you.

Each run deals phrases one at a time from a bank of more than 900 well-known English expressions, from short ones like GOOD LUCK to long proverbs such as EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING. Consonants, spaces and apostrophes stay where they are, and the letter Y is never taken, so the shape of every word is a clue. A gold cursor sits on the first empty blank and a timer bar runs along the bottom of the card. Pick the right vowel and it drops into place in its own colour. Solve the phrase and the card is stamped SOLVED, a bonus rolls in and the next case slides in half a second later. The phrases get longer as the run goes on, from three missing vowels at the start to nine, ten and even eleven, and the timers get tighter: the first phrases give you about 1.6 seconds per missing vowel, later ones only 0.8.

You have five hearts, and nothing gives one back. A wrong vowel costs a heart and your streak, and the cursor stays where it is so you can try again. Let a phrase's timer run out and it is stamped TOO SLOW: the answer is shown, a heart is gone and the next phrase comes. Lose the fifth heart and the run is over, with the card stamped OUT OF HEARTS and your last phrase answered. There is no overall clock: Endless is the main mode, and a good player keeps going for minutes while the phrases keep coming at a hard, steady pace. For a quick game there is also Timed, the same five hearts inside a two-minute run that ends with a SHIFT OVER stamp.

Every right vowel is worth 10 points times your multiplier, and the multiplier climbs from ×1 to ×5 as you string right answers together: ×2 after ten in a row, ×3 after twenty and so on up to forty. Every solved phrase adds a bonus of 20 points per vowel, doubled when you solved it without a single mistake, plus a time bonus of 10 points for every second left on its timer, all multiplied. Speed and accuracy both pay: a quick, clean player earns big time bonuses, keeps a ×5 streak and lasts longer, while guessing burns hearts. Every run follows the same difficulty ramp, with the same number of missing vowels and the same timer in the same order, so no run gets an easier set. Endless and Timed each have their own leaderboards, and every run counts: top runs are replayed on our servers with the same game code before they show, so every score on the board is real.

On a phone or tablet you tap the five big vowel tiles at the bottom of the screen. On a computer you can click the tiles or simply type A, E, I, O or U on your keyboard; every other key is ignored, so you can even type the whole phrase and only the vowels count. On a wide screen the case card takes the left side and the hearts, score and vowel bank sit beside it, so the game works as well on a laptop as on a phone. That puts it among our mobile games and our PC games, and makes it a natural pick for fans of keyboard games.

An Endless run lasts until your hearts are gone, usually one to two minutes, and the Timed run never more than two, which makes Vowel Stealer one of our quick games and a good warm-up for the brain between tasks. Want more? Browse the brain games and the word guessing games, crack hidden five-letter words in Wordlock or unscramble seven letters in Anagram Blitz. Every phrase in Vowel Stealer is a saying people really use, so each run is also a small tour of English idioms, from SPILL THE BEANS to ONCE IN A BLUE MOON.