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Title screen of The Tomb of Archimedes, a Pi Day Latin escape room

Pi Day · Latin IV

The Tomb of Archimedes

A Pi Day Latin escape room for Latin IV

Works with: Cambridge Latin Course, Book 4, Stages 35–40

The people of Syracuse have forgotten where Archimedes is buried. Cicero, a young Roman official in Sicily, sets out to find the tomb marked with a sphere and a cylinder. Solve seven puzzles to follow his search.

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 1–4 (to Stage 40)
  • Grammar: present and perfect infinitives, active and passive
  • Macrons never needed
  • Takes about one lesson
Illustration from the picture-count lock of The Tomb of Archimedes

For teachers

Each of the seven locks practises something different:

  1. Crossword — the cemetery, the search and the scholar, in Latin from Book 4.
  2. Anagrams — unscramble seven things Cicero does in the cemetery.
  3. Cipher — decode a message in Latin, then answer the riddle it asks.
  4. Matching — two verbs, inveniō ("find") and legō ("read"), in their infinitives: present and perfect, active and passive.
  5. Picture Count — reassemble the cemetery, 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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