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Title screen of The Rhetor's Contest, a Back to School Latin escape room

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The Rhetor's Contest

A Back to School Latin escape room for Latin III

Works with: Cambridge Latin Course, Book 3, Stages 21–34

On the steps of a school of public speaking in Rome, young men in togas argue a case while the rhetor listens. Today it is a contest, and Quintus is taking part. Solve seven puzzles to hear the verdict.

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 Books 1–3 (to Stage 34)
  • Grammar: the passive of laudō and vincō
  • Macrons never needed
  • Takes about one lesson
Illustration from the picture-count lock of The Rhetor's Contest

For teachers

Each of the seven locks practises something different:

  1. Crossword — speaking, arguing and Rome, in Latin from Book 3.
  2. Anagrams — unscramble seven words from the contest.
  3. Cipher — decode a message in Latin, then answer the riddle it asks.
  4. Matching — two verbs, laudō ("praise") and vincō ("beat, win"), in the passive: present, imperfect and perfect.
  5. Picture Count — reassemble the school of speaking, 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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