Volcano Crossword Printable

Print a criss-cross volcano crossword of parts, eruptions, rocks, plates and famous volcanoes, each with its answer key.

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Volcano Crossword

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Answer key: Volcano Crossword

1M2L3AVA4VSG5CEHMRN6BASALTT7C8SHIEL9DHROA10PR11MANTLEMBAA12ERUPTIONRET

Across 2 LAVA · 6 BASALT · 8 SHIELD · 11 MANTLE · 12 ERUPTION

Down 1 MAGMA · 3 ASH · 4 VENT · 5 CRATER · 7 CHAMBER · 9 DORMANT · 10 PLATE

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Parts of a Volcano 18

  • Base Bottom of a mountain, where it is widest
  • Bulge Swelling on the side of a volcano as melted rock pushes up inside it
  • Chamber Underground pool where melted rock waits before it rises
  • Conduit Passage that carries melted rock up from deep below
  • Crater Wide round hollow at the top of a volcano
  • Dike Wall-like sheet of once-melted rock that filled a crack running up through other rock
  • Fissure Long crack in the ground that pours out molten rock, often with no blast
  • Flank Side of a volcano, where smaller openings can break out
  • Fumarole Opening that hisses out steam and hot gases but no molten rock
  • Neck Another name for the hardened stopper inside the pipe of a volcano
  • Plug Hardened rock that blocks the pipe of a volcano
  • Rim Top edge of the round hollow; hikers walk along it and look down in
  • Sill Sheet of once-melted rock that pushed in sideways between two beds of rock
  • Slope Slanted side you would climb to reach the top
  • Strata Layers, like the stacked beds inside a tall, steep volcano
  • Summit Mountain top, where climbers stop for a photo
  • Tube Tunnel left when the skin of a molten river hardens and the inside drains away
  • Vent Opening where melted rock and gas get out

Eruptions, Lava and Ash 26

  • Aa Rough, rubbly kind of flow that is hard to walk on; a Hawaiian word
  • Ash Gritty gray powder that an exploding volcano blows high into the sky
  • Bomb Blob of partly molten rock hurled through the air, more than 64 mm across
  • Effusive Describes an outpouring in which molten rock streams out steadily, with no blast
  • Eruption When a volcano bursts open and throws out what was inside
  • Explosive Describes a volcano that blows itself apart instead of pouring quietly
  • Fountain Jet of runny molten rock that sprays high into the air
  • Hazard Danger; scientists draw maps of the ones around a volcano
  • Lahar Fast, wet rush of mud and rock that follows the river valleys down a volcano
  • Lapilli Pebble-sized bits thrown out by a volcano; the name is Latin for little stones
  • Lava Glowing red-orange rock that runs like syrup down the side of a volcano
  • Lightning Electric flash that can crackle inside a dark cloud of volcanic dust
  • Magma Name for rock that is hot enough to be liquid and has not yet come out
  • Mudflow River of wet earth sliding downhill
  • Pahoehoe Smooth, ropy-skinned kind of hardened flow; the word is Hawaiian
  • Phreatic Describes a steam blast set off when hot rock heats groundwater
  • Plinian Kind of huge blast with a towering cloud, named for a Roman who described one in a letter
  • Plume Tall cloud that rises over an erupting mountain
  • Pyroclastic ___ flow: ground-hugging rush of hot gas and rock that averages 100 km/h
  • Rumble Deep rolling sound, like far-off thunder
  • Spatter Blobs of molten rock that land still soft and stick together
  • Sulfur Bright yellow element left on the rocks around steaming openings
  • Tephra Every loose bit a volcano throws into the air, from dust to boulders
  • Tremor Small trembling of the ground
  • Vog Haze made by the gases of a volcano; the word is formed like smog
  • Volcanologist Scientist whose work may mean taking samples of fresh, hot flows

Kinds of Volcano 15

  • Active Describes a volcano that has a history of outbursts and is likely to have more
  • Atoll Circle of coral that grew around a volcanic island that later sank
  • Caldera Huge basin left when the ground sinks into an emptied space below
  • Cinder ___ cone: small, steep hill of loose bits around one opening
  • Composite ___ volcano: tall and steep, built up in alternating layers
  • Cryovolcano Ice volcano on a cold moon that sends out liquid water and gases instead of molten rock
  • Dome Rounded mound of thick, pasty rock piled up over an opening
  • Dormant Quiet for now, as if asleep, but able to wake
  • Extinct Never expected to erupt again
  • Maar Wide, low hole blasted out when rising melted rock meets groundwater
  • Seamount Dead volcano, most often, that rises from the ocean floor but stays below the waves
  • Shield ___ volcano: wide and low, like the guard of a warrior laid flat on the ground
  • Stratovolcano Another name for a tall, steep volcano built layer upon layer
  • Submarine Describes a volcano whose opening lies under the sea
  • Supervolcano Volcano that has had a blast of the highest size, an 8 on the index

Volcanic Rocks 22

  • Andesite Volcanic rock in between the dark and the pale kinds, named after a South American range
  • Basalt Dark rock that makes up most of the ocean floor
  • Bubble Round pocket of gas inside a liquid, as in soda or molten rock
  • Column One of about 40,000 stone pillars at the Giant's Causeway
  • Crystal Tiny shape with flat sides that grows as molten rock loses heat slowly
  • Extrusive Describes rock that came out of a volcano before it turned solid
  • Granite Speckled rock that hardened slowly underground, so its grains grew big enough to see
  • Hair Thin strands of volcanic glass are named for the ___ of a Hawaiian goddess
  • Igneous Family of rocks born from cooled molten material; the name is from the Latin for fiery
  • Intrusive Describes rock that turned solid underground and never reached the surface
  • Mineral Quartz is one, and so is each of the other natural solids in a rock
  • Obsidian Black rock that looks like bottle glass; people once chipped it into arrowheads
  • Olivine Named for its olive-green color, it is found in many dark fire-born rocks
  • Pillow Rounded shape that molten rock takes when it erupts under the sea
  • Porous Like a sponge: riddled with little spaces that let water in
  • Pumice Feather-light stone, frothy with gas when it formed, used for scrubbing
  • Rhyolite Rock, usually light in color, made when silica-heavy molten rock cools fast at the surface
  • Sand On some volcanic beaches it is black
  • Scoria Dark rock riddled with holes; unlike its light cousin, most of it sinks
  • Soil Volcanic dust breaks down into a rich kind of this, good for crops
  • Tuff Rock formed when layers of volcanic dust harden together
  • Vesicle Small hole left in rock by trapped gas

Plates and Hot Spots 25

  • Arc Belt of volcanoes that looks like a bow from above, such as the islands of Japan
  • Boundary Edge where two slabs of the Earth's shell meet; most volcanoes lie along one
  • Convection Slow churning in which hot rock rises and cooler rock sinks
  • Core Innermost part of the Earth, far below any volcano; its outer part is liquid metal
  • Crust Outermost shell of the Earth, thinnest under the oceans
  • Earthquake Jolt that rattles the windows when rock deep down suddenly shifts
  • Fault Break in the rocks of the Earth where one side can jerk past the other
  • Geothermal Describes power plants that run on underground heat
  • Geyser Jet of boiling water that bursts from the ground again and again
  • Hotspot Place where heat from deep in the Earth feeds volcanoes, on a slab edge or not
  • Lithosphere Stiff outer layer of the Earth that the moving slabs are made of
  • Mantle Layer that makes up most of the inside of the Earth, about 84% of its volume
  • Pacific Ocean with a belt of volcanoes around its edge
  • Plate Giant slab of the Earth's outer shell that slowly moves
  • Pressure Squeezing force; trapped gas builds it up before a blast
  • Ridge Mid-ocean ___: part of the longest mountain range in the world, most of it underwater
  • Rift Place where the Earth's outer shell is being pulled apart
  • Ring ___ of Fire: belt of volcanoes that surrounds most of the largest ocean
  • Seismometer Tool whose wiggly line gets wild when the ground trembles
  • Spreading Seafloor ___: new ocean bottom forming as two slabs move apart
  • Subduction What happens where an ocean floor slab dives down under its neighbor
  • Tectonic Having to do with the slow movement of the Earth's outer shell
  • Tiltmeter Tool that senses the sides of a volcano swelling by tiny angles
  • Trench Deepest kind of ocean valley, found where one slab dives under another
  • Tsunami Series of giant sea waves that an undersea blast or landslide can start

Famous Volcanoes 32

  • Cascades Chain of snowy volcanoes running through Washington and Oregon
  • Cotopaxi Snow-topped volcano in the Andes of Ecuador
  • Erebus Antarctic volcano, the southernmost one on Earth that still erupts
  • Etna Volcano on the east coast of Sicily that is almost always doing something
  • Fuji Japanese volcano with a near-perfect shape, quiet since 1707
  • Hawaii State where visitors can watch molten rock run into the sea
  • Helens Mount St. ___: Washington volcano that lost its top in May 1980
  • Hood Mount ___, the volcano that is the highest mountain in Oregon
  • Iceland Country whose capital is Reykjavik, warmed by underground heat and dotted with volcanoes
  • Io Moon of Jupiter with more than 400 erupting volcanoes
  • Kilauea Busiest of the five volcanoes on the Big Island; its name means spewing
  • Kilimanjaro African giant made of three volcanic cones, the highest of them called Kibo
  • Krakatoa Indonesian volcano whose 1883 blast was heard thousands of kilometers away
  • Mars Red planet whose giant volcanoes dwarf any on Earth
  • Mauna Loa Hawaiian giant whose name means Long Mountain
  • Mazama Oregon volcano that collapsed about 7,700 years ago; a deep blue lake fills the hole
  • Naples Italian city on a bay, about 9 km from a famous volcano
  • Olympus ___ Mons: giant volcano on another planet, about 2.5 times as high as Everest
  • Parícutin Volcano that a Mexican farmer watched begin in his own field in 1943
  • Pele Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes, whose home is said to be Halemaumau
  • Pinatubo Philippine volcano whose 1991 blast cooled the world by about half a degree
  • Pompeii Roman town buried under volcanic dust and stones in AD 79 and dug out long after
  • Popocatépetl Volcano near Mexico City whose Aztec-language name means smoking mountain
  • Rainier Mount ___, the icy volcano about 59 miles from Seattle
  • Santorini Greek island left curved around a water-filled hole by a blast about 3,600 years ago
  • Shasta Mount ___, a snowy California volcano near the south end of a long range
  • Stromboli Small Italian island whose volcano has puffed away almost nonstop for over 2,000 years
  • Surtsey New island that rose from the North Atlantic in an outburst that began in 1963
  • Tambora Its 1815 blast in Indonesia led to a "year without a summer"
  • Vesuvius Italian volcano that buried Roman towns in AD 79
  • Vulcan Roman god of fire whose name gave us the word volcano
  • Yellowstone Wyoming park that holds a giant basin left by a blast about 631,000 years ago

How this list was compiled: Clues written for this site for an earth science unit, in six sets: parts of a volcano, eruptions, kinds of volcano, volcanic rocks, plates and hot spots, and famous volcanoes. Facts were checked against English Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org, CC BY-SA 4.0) and two pages of the U.S. Geological Survey (usgs.gov), its volcano glossary and Principal Types of Volcanoes, in October 2026. Dates and heights are as those sources give them. Licence: own work

How it works

This volcano crossword, printable on Letter or A4, is a vocabulary crossword for an earth science unit. The first puzzle has 12 easy answers, among them Magma, Lava, Crater, Ash and Vent.

Read the full guide

Six sets after the easy one

Parts of a Volcano has Conduit, Fumarole and Fissure. Eruptions, Lava and Ash has Tephra, Lahar and Pahoehoe. Kinds of Volcano has Caldera, Stratovolcano and Maar. Volcanic Rocks has Obsidian, Scoria and Tuff. Plates and Hot Spots has Subduction, Trench and Hotspot. Famous Volcanoes has Etna, Fuji and Kilimanjaro.

Famous volcanoes, with their dates

Each clue in Famous Volcanoes gives a place, and a date where there is one: Vesuvius in AD 79, Tambora in 1815, Krakatoa in 1883, Parícutin in 1943, Mount St. Helens in 1980 and Pinatubo in 1991.

  • Print Parts of a Volcano beside a cutaway drawing on the board, and Famous Volcanoes with a world map to mark.

Questions and answers

Is the volcano crossword free to print?

Yes. No sign-up is needed, and you may print one for each student. The answer key prints last, on its own sheet.

What grade is the volcano crossword for?

Easy Volcano Words suits grades 3 to 5, with answers such as Crust, Dormant and Geyser. The six themed sets suit grades 5 to 9. These bands are our judgment, not a published standard.

What is the difference between magma and lava?

Both are molten rock. It is magma while it is beneath the surface, and lava once it has been expelled onto the surface.

What are the main types of volcanoes?

The U.S. Geological Survey groups volcanoes into four main kinds: cinder cones, composite volcanoes, shield volcanoes and lava domes. Cinder, Composite, Shield and Dome are answers in Kinds of Volcano.

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