Monthly Archives: June 2005

Oops!

One of the larger Spanish publishers (Espasa-Calpe) has just published a translation of twenty-three tales of “William Sidney Porter, más conocido como [= better known as] O’Henry”. The web-page includes a picture of the cover of the book: though blurry, … Continue reading

Posted in Orbilius | 1 Comment

Fooling the Gods?

Language Hat has an interesting post on the etymology of ‘theodolite’, which he treats as some kind of exotic or obsolete scientific instrument. I have used one on the job, though not in the last quarter-century. From 1978 to 1982 … Continue reading

Posted in Etymology, Orbilius | 1 Comment

Scholastic Humor

Found on Amazon: Martial, Buch VI: Ein Kommentar (Hypomnemata) by Farouk Grewing Availability: Currently unavailable. It is in fact still in print in Germany, for only 89 Euros — around $107 — in paperback, and worth every penny. For more … Continue reading

Posted in Jokes, Latin Literature | Tagged | Leave a comment

Appeal for Information

After several years of stagnation, I am trying to update my list of Forthcoming Work in Classics. I would be grateful for any additions, deletions, and alterations to the list as it now stands. These may be left in the … Continue reading

Posted in Forthcoming Texts | 8 Comments

Latin Scrabble V: Why Latin Scrabble is Even Better than English Scrabble

English Scrabble mostly proceeds by adding words that cross those already on the board. Of course, one can also extend a word at either or both ends, turning CAP into CAPE and then into ESCAPE or CAPED or CAPER and … Continue reading

Posted in Latin Scrabble | 2 Comments

Latin Scrabble IV: A Special Rule to Make Things More Interesting

A rule that increases the difficulty and interest of the game is to allow double or even triple score for homonyms, over and above any double or triple word scores marked on the board. This should not be permitted when … Continue reading

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Latin Scrabble III: Clarifying the Rules

Here are some tentative examples of possible rules and rule changes: To avoid arguments, it helps to have an authority. There are obviously no official Scrabble word-lists for Latin. For high school students and undergraduates, the teacher can be the … Continue reading

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Greek Crossword Puzzle

Sorry about the delay. As promised, the puzzle is here, with further instructions. There is a printable version (Word 2000 for Windows .DOC file, three pages, landscape mode) here, though without the instructions. Scroll down to yesterday’s ‘Announcements’, or click … Continue reading

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Latin Scrabble II: Calculating Letter Frequencies

Getting hold of a sample of Latin text of any size is easy enough. I wanted 100,000 characters, so I copied three books from different websites into a single file. I believe they were Cicero’s 1st Catilinarian, Vergil’s Eclogues, and … Continue reading

Posted in Latin Scrabble | 1 Comment

Announcements

1. It’s been more than five years since I first posted a Greek crossword puzzle, so I’ve made up another one. This one is bigger and better: 16 x 12 instead of 9 x 6, and using the entire Greek … Continue reading

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Coming Soon

The categories will be completely reworked in the next few days. For teachers, the new ones will be partly by subject, partly by level, so that all posts likely to be of interest to middle-school, high-school, college, or graduate school … Continue reading

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Latin Scrabble I: Introduction

Note: Four more parts will follow: II. Calculating letter frequencies, III. Clarifying the rules, IV. A special rule to make things more interesting, V. Why Latin Scrabble is better than English Scrabble. The whole will then be put together into … Continue reading

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Oh Well . . . .

I spent all last Thursday afternoon with a nagging feeling that I was forgetting to do something, and only realized that I had missed the National Spelling Bee an hour or two after it ended. I guess the habit of … Continue reading

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Must-See TV

Tomorrow is the one day of the year I watch ESPN: the finals of the National Spelling Bee will be on from 10:00 to 12:00 and 1:00 to 3:30 Eastern time. I probably won’t blog it, or watch the whole … Continue reading

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