105 September 14
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.
Composition
Join each group of ideas together into one sentence, in at least two different ways.
1 The Russians erected telephone lines. The Germans shot them down. This happened repeatedly.
2 They tried to bury the lines. The ground was stony. They could not dig.
3 Nikolai saw a manhole. He thought of the water mains. He imagined using them for the wires.
106 September 14
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.
Polywords (10)
107 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.
2 Lonely.
3 Remote.
108 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
Crosswords (5)
109 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.
110 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.
Polywords (10)