Clay Lane is inspired by educational materials created NL Clay, and used in English schools and homes from the 1920s to the 1960s. The Blog is a newsletter of recent additions and some selections from our archive, including brainteasers in grammar and vocabulary, and brief passages from history and literature.
You are welcome to ask for my help with any of the materials on Clay Lane. Drop me a line via email to: nicholas@claylane.uk.
Add Vowels
How many words can you make just by adding vowels to these consonants? See if you can get 5.
bndd
Spinner
Make a sentence that uses ALL THREE of these words:
Nomination. Long. Reputation.
These words are served randomly.
You can change e.g. go → went,
or quick → quickly.
In 1721, Bishop Berkeley published an agonised response to the frenzy for get-rich-quick schemes then gripping the country, of which the infamous South Sea Company was just one startling example. The nation’s economy, he said, needed money and credit to cycle steadily through honest industry. Too many people were taking them out and staking them on the wheel of fortune.
Suggest commands, warnings or prohibitions that you have seen publicly printed or exhibited, e.g. No Entry. How many of your signs are complete sentences? How could you make them into complete sentences? E.g. ‘Please do not enter this way’.
Based on an exercise in Think and Speak (1929) by NL Clay.
‘The Gloria Scott’ is a short story in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In that tale, James Armitage received the following letter, which threw him into a pitiable state of anxiety. See if you can spot the hidden message.
The supply of game for London is going steadily up. Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all orders for fly paper and for preservation of your hen pheasant’s life.
Now see if you can compose another letter, using the same system, for the cable received by Carruthers in ‘The Solitary Cyclist’ (a story in The Return of Sherlock Holmes).
The old man is dead.
In 1722 the Duke of Marlborough died, the most celebrated English general of the War of the Spanish Succession, during which he never suffered a defeat. The splendour of the ceremonies, the national mourning, the monuments in his honour, the wealth he had accumulated, Daniel Defoe described them all; and then he reminded us: he is dead.
N. gives a verb and names one of the three kinds of sentence, viz. Statement, Question, Command. M. uses the word in that kind of sentence. For example:
1 Disappear, in a Question.
2 Bring, in a Command.
3 Keep, in a Statement.
More verbs: IAdmit. IIFry. IIILook. IVPlay. VScrub.
Since commands can be as short as a single word, let’s say that sentences should be seven words or more in length.
Based on an exercise in Think and Speak (1929) by NL Clay.
