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Title screen of The Gladiators, a The Games Latin escape room

The Games · Latin I

The Gladiators

A The Games Latin escape room for Latin I

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

A day at the amphitheatre of Pompeii: twenty thousand spectators, lions behind a grille, and the gladiators fighting in the sand. Celadus, the town's favourite, is in the arena. Solve seven puzzles to see how he fares.

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 pugnat and superat
  • Macrons never needed
  • Takes about one lesson
Illustration from the picture-count lock of The Gladiators

For teachers

Each of the seven locks practises something different:

  1. Crossword — the amphitheatre and the games, in Latin from Book 1.
  2. Anagrams — unscramble seven things that happen at the games.
  3. Cipher — decode a message in Latin, then answer the riddle it asks.
  4. Matching — two verbs, pugnat ("fights") and superat ("overcomes"), in the present, imperfect and perfect.
  5. Picture Count — reassemble the amphitheatre, 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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