Versus Magicus
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© The Classical Couple.
A wound will not heal, and the fever is rising. The town doctor has tried bandages and herbs — now he reaches for something older: a versus magicus, a magic spell, calling for a spider's web, a dissected black mouse, and boiling vinegar. Some cures are stranger than the sickness.
Seven puzzles stand between you and the finished cure. Solve one, and the remedy comes together — until, at the end, one final word reveals what really healed the patient.
Crossword — the vocabulary of a Roman doctor's surgery.
Anagrams — unscramble seven words from the strange cure.
Cipher — decode a message, then answer the riddle it asks.
Matching — two verbs, healing and cutting, across every tense you know.
Picture Count — reassemble a scattered scene, then count what you see.
Odd One Out — find the mismatched word in each row to reveal the cure's story, then answer questions about it.
Final Rebus — one clue from every lock. Their first letters, rearranged, spell the final word.
Every answer box checks itself instantly. Spelling and capitalization are forgiving — macrons are never required.
Fifteen words from a Roman doctor's surgery. Every clue gives the English meaning; you supply the Latin. Fill the grid — every crossing letter must agree both ways. Six cells are marked in red: once the grid is solved, their letters unscramble into one more word.
The grid is correct. Unscramble the six red letters:
Seven words from the doctor's strange cure. Unscramble each one.
A message has been shifted 3 letters forward through the alphabet. Shift each letter back 3 to decode it — the message speaks for itself. Answer the question it asks, in Latin.
Decode the message — it already asks its own question at the end.
Two verbs from the doctor's cure, sānō, sānāre ("to heal") and scindō, scindere ("to cut") — across every tense you've learned so far. Drag each English meaning onto its matching Latin form.
The picture below has been scattered into 24 pieces — click two to swap them. Each piece locks in place once it's correct. When the whole picture is assembled, five counting questions will appear — in Latin, they ask quot ("how many") of each thing you can find.
Click two pieces to swap them. Correct pieces lock in place — keep going until the whole picture is assembled.
In each row, three tiles belong together and one doesn't. Drag out the odd tile. Find all 15 to learn what the doctor did.
Now that the story is whole, answer these in Latin:
One clue from every lock you solved. Answer each in Latin — the first letter of each answer will reveal itself, in the order the locks appeared.
You're almost there! Arrange these letters to make a word.
The password was:
timēns — "fearing." The patient survived the cure more afraid of the doctor's cobwebs and boiling vinegar than he ever was of the wound itself.