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.
Make as many words as you can by adding vowels (AEIOU) to these consonants.
rss (11+1)
arises. arouses. arses. erases. irises. raises. reissue. rises. roses. rouses. ruses.
reuses.
Pick any group of three words, and see if you can still remember them in an hour, and still remember them tomorrow. For a further challenge, try using all of your three words together in a single sentence.
The words in this puzzle are taken randomly from a list of 927 common words. You can change e.g. cat → cats, go → went, quick → quickly.
1 Meeting. Student. Would.
2 Experience. Go. Series.
3 Animal. Generation. Yeah.
Variations: 1. include direct and indirect speech 2. include one or more of these words: although, because, despite, either/or, if, unless, until, when, whether, which, who 3. use negatives (not, isn’t, neither/nor, never, nobody etc.)
Post Box : Help Available
1
★ On This Day Old English Calendar ?
A King and Queen gentler than the times in which they lived.
2
Make as many words as you can using the letters of one nine-letter word. Can you beat our score?
3
Professor Smith reluctantly confides his ‘guilty secret’ to his students.
Media not showing? Let me know!
Pimpernel Smith (1941) stars Leslie Howard as an eccentric professor who takes a team of archaeology students to Germany, just before the outbreak of war in 1939. As they travel across the country by train, the students fall to reading a newspaper. They laugh at the sensational tales of a mysterious rescuer dubbed ‘The Shadow’, smuggling great men of Science and the Arts out of concentration camps. But it turns out it isn’t a joke at all...
4
Unjumble these sentences from the novels of George Eliot.
Rearrange these words to create a sentence. The originals come from Scenes of Clerical Life (1857) by George Eliot.
1 Dear have had evening you nice a.
2 Pilgrim an generally mr kind with splutter of spoke intermittent.
3 Thicker was snow thicker in and the flakes falling.
1 Have you had a nice evening, dear?
2 Mr Pilgrim generally spoke with an intermittent kind of splutter.
3 The snow was falling in thicker and thicker flakes.
Post Box : Help Available
5
Join each group of ideas together to make a single sentence, in as many ways as you can. See if you can include any of the words in square brackets.
John Howard visited Durham gaol. The cells were cramped. He recorded their dimensions. [Length. Small. Write.]
Some prisoners failed to escape. The gaolers chained them to the floor. [Break. Prevent. Try.]
The prison had a yard. Howard said it should be an exercise yard. The gaoler made it a stables. [Ignore. Advise. Turn.]
Post Box : Help Available
7
Make up sentences using these phrases, making sure you put plenty of action in.
For each of these phrases, compose a lively sentence that uses it. Your sentences should include at least one person, one object and one action.
IAt the foot of the cliff. IIUnder the pillow. IIIAcross the table. IVBehind the door. VBetween the pages. VIOn the platform.Adapted from an exercise in School Certificate English (1933) by NL Clay.
Post Box : Help Available