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Title screen of Archimedes' Circles, a Pi Day Latin escape room

Pi Day · Latin I

Archimedes' Circles

A Pi Day Latin escape room for Latin I

Works with: Cambridge Latin Course, Book 1, Stages 1–12

Syracuse, 212 BC. Roman soldiers are pouring into the city, and Archimedes, the mathematician who measured pi, is too busy with his circles to notice. Solve seven puzzles to follow the last day of his life.

Play the free taster (2 of 7 locks)Members: full room

The taster runs in the browser, with nothing to install. Members share a private class link that opens all seven locks. Sound adds to the atmosphere.

What's inside

  • 7 self-grading locks, all in Latin
  • Vocabulary from Cambridge Latin Course Book 1 (Stages 1–12)
  • Grammar: present, imperfect and perfect of scrībit and capit
  • Macrons never needed
  • Takes about one lesson
Illustration from the picture-count lock of Archimedes' Circles

For teachers

Each of the seven locks practises something different:

  1. Crossword — the city, the siege and the scholar, in Latin from Book 1.
  2. Anagrams — unscramble seven things done as the city falls.
  3. Cipher — decode a message in Latin, then answer the riddle it asks.
  4. Matching — two verbs, scrībit ("writes") and capit ("takes"), in the present, imperfect and perfect.
  5. Picture Count — reassemble the courtyard, then count what you see.
  6. Odd One Out — find the word that doesn't belong in each row to build the story, then answer questions about it.
  7. Final Rebus — one clue from every lock. Their first letters spell the final word.

Most classes take about 50 minutes. Students can work alone, in pairs or in small teams on any device with a browser, or you can project the room and solve it together as a class. Every answer checks itself, so you are free to circulate, and progress is saved in the browser, so a room can be split across two lessons.

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