187
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
Posted September 4 2024
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188
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.
Posted September 1 2024
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189
Make as many words as you can using the letters of one nine-letter word. Can you beat our score?
Posted August 31 2024
190
Some years before the Elgin marbles were put on display in the British Museum, rising artist Benjamin Haydon got a sneak preview.
Posted August 30 2024
191
Make each group of words into a lively scene.
This is adapted from an idea in Think and Speak (1929). It is an exercise not just in composition or description but also in visualisation. Choose a phrase below and expand it into a lively scene of at least one sentence. Including people or animals is a good way to impart interest and movement.
1 Van in street.
2 Bird feeder.
3 Kettle.
Try to make sure your scene helps the reader answer six questions: What? Who? Where? When (e.g. in the day, or in history)? How? Why? But remember: Show, don’t tell!
See Rudyard Kipling’s poem Six Honest Serving-Men.
Posted August 30 2024
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192
Reconstruct the whole of this dialogue using only the replies.
Posted August 29 2024
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