Welcome to the Clay Lane blog
This page keeps you up-to-date with recent additions, alerts you to posts you may have missed, and invites you to tackle exercises similar to those NL Clay gave to pupils aged 12-13 in the 1930s.
1 Today September 17
Samuel Smiles explains why the London and Birmingham Railway was an achievement superior to the Great Pyramid of Giza.
September 17 ns
The London and Birmingham Railway opens (1838)
When the London and Birmingham Railway opened in 1838, it was an engineering marvel. But progress from the era of the Great Pyramids to Britain’s railways did not lie in engineering alone. It lay in the fact that the industrial revolution was an achievement not of servants gratifying a political elite, but of free men pursuing their own advantages.
Make as many words as you can by adding vowels (AEIOU) to these consonants.
pls (13+2)
pails. pales. pals. peals. peels. piles. pleas. please. plies. plus. poles. pools. pulse.
opals. pilaus.
2 September 14 Saturday
A stray cat helps the Red Army to baffle the advancing Nazis.
I recently added this post, The Story of Miss.
It is my own version of events during the Second World War; the essential facts come originally from Soviet War News. It all happened as part of the blockade organised by Germany and Finland on Russia’s northwest from the summer of 1941, when the USSR joined the British Empire’s resistance to Nazi Germany (the USA was still neutral at this point). The star of the story is a stray cat.
3 September 14 Saturday
Make as many words as you can using the letters of one nine-letter word. Can you beat our score?
I have added a new Polyword to the collection.
Make as many words as you can using only the nine letters you are given below. Your words should all be four letters or more in length, and they should all contain the letter highlighted in the centre of the grid. You may not use the same letter twice. There is one nine-letter word to find.
4 September 9
These words have very similar meaning but they are not the same — can you show the difference?
To what extent are these words synonymous? Give examples.
1 Isolated. Lonely. Remote.
2 Break. Fracture. Snap.
3 Doodle. Draw. Sketch.
5 September 4
Fill the empty boxes with letters, using the clues to help you find the right ones.
A new crossword for the collection.
Fill the empty boxes with letters to make words running across and down. Use the numbered clues to help you find the right words. Click any box to get started.
1 across Pass along like fast-moving clouds. 4 letters
4 across Sunrise. 4 letters
6 across Very powerful and harmful in effect, like a disease. 8 letters
7 across A spendthrift, one who throws away his money. 8 letters
2 down (Of an act) hidden, done amid secrecy. 6 letters
3 down Mock scornfully. 6 letters
4 down Flood. 6 letters
5 down Extract something with difficulty, as if from a shell; Nathaniel ______, a character in Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens. 6 letters
6 September 1
What well-known phrase do we take from this little piece of history, and can you use it?
This exercise is based on NL Clay’s Advanced English Exercises (1939).
Read the following snippet from history. To which well-known saying has this tradition given rise? How might you use the phrase today?
In times past, it was customary that, after a successful hunt for deer, the venison would be divided among the huntsmen. The gentlemen would take the choice cuts, and these would be served to them at their high table upon the dais. Those of inferior rank were led to lower tables, where they were served with a pie containing the leftover entrails or umbles (a word derived from Middle French nombles).
The phrase is eat humble pie. It is a pun on ‘the umbles’ (entrails) and ‘humble’. Whoever ‘eats humble pie’ has been demoted to a lower position than the one he aspired to.
Louisa M. Alcott: Polly had a spice of girlish malice, and rather liked to see domineering Tom eat humble-pie, just enough to do him good, you know.
7 August 31
Make as many words as you can using the letters of one nine-letter word. Can you beat our score?
I have added a new Polyword to the collection.
Make as many words as you can using only the nine letters you are given below. Your words should all be four letters or more in length, and they should all contain the letter highlighted in the centre of the grid. You may not use the same letter twice. There is one nine-letter word to find.