R-Controlled Vowels Word Search
This r-controlled vowels word search has forty words where an r changes the vowel in front of it: barn and scarf for ar, fern and herd for er, skirt and chirp for ir, fork and torch for or, turtle and purse for ur.
Teachers often call it the bossy r, because the vowel no longer says its short sound or its long one. Three of the five spellings merge into a single sound in American English: the er in fern, the ir in skirt and the ur in curl all rhyme, so a reader has to remember which letters each word uses. A w in front bends the rule again. After w, or sounds like er, as in word, work and worm, and ar sounds like or, as in warm and war.
Whether the r is heard at all depends on the accent. Most Americans and Canadians say it after a vowel, while much of England, Australia and New Zealand drops it, so barn comes out with no r sound. Linguists call the American way rhotic. In 1962 William Labov tested it in New York department stores, asking clerks for something he knew was on the fourth floor and listening for the r in their answer. Clerks at Saks, the most expensive store, kept the r far more often than clerks at S. Klein, the cheapest.
Free R-Controlled Vowels Word Search Online Game
Play the R-Controlled Vowels word search in your browser, on your own or head to head against a friend in real time. Nothing to install and no account needed – send someone the link and you are both looking at the same grid.
R-Controlled Vowels Word Search Printable Puzzles
Three sheets to choose from, free to print or download as a PDF. Pick a difficulty below, or open the printable R-Controlled Vowels word search page to see all three together, generate a fresh grid, and check the full word list.
-
Hard
15x15 grid, up to 23 hidden words
Print or Download pdf -
Medium
12x12 grid, up to 15 hidden words
Print or Download pdf -
Easy
10x10 grid, 5 words across and down
Print or Download pdf
Puzzle Vocabulary Words
Below you can see all possible words that the topic R-Controlled Vowels has.
Depends on difficulty level you select in the game amount of words hidden in the puzzle will be different.
In Easy game you have to find up to 5 words, medium game can have up to 15 words and hard puzzle can have up to 23 words.
Every time you start a new game - our word search generator will pick random words to build the puzzle.
- Acorn
- Barn
- Birch
- Burst
- Cart
- Chirp
- Church
- Clerk
- Curl
- Dirt
- Fern
- Fork
- Garlic
- Germ
- Harp
- Herd
- Horn
- Hurdle
- Marble
- Mermaid
- North
- Perch
- Porch
- Purse
- Scarf
- Serve
- Skirt
- Spark
- Sport
- Squirt
- Stork
- Surf
- Swirl
- Third
- Torch
- Turnip
- Turtle
- Twirl
- Verb
- Yard