Latin Scrabble

If we roll back the mists of time just a little, to say.. December 2006, I was a very anxious, very excitable sixth-former, trying to bond with a group of wannabe Classics students who had all decided to apply to the same Oxbridge college. There we were, sitting in the hallowed grounds, idly making conversation in an magnificent oak-panelled room. Coming from a school that was conceived as a '60s box and by now had more battered mobiles than permanent classrooms, I was in awe. We'd already sat through a two-hour translation exam in the great hall and the more confident among us strode out the doors discussing the fiendish use of a gerundive in the third line, proclaiming about their translation and generally making me wonder if I'd even had the same text. My feeling of unease grew as I ventured a comment about my surroundings, only to realise that I'd addressed a boy from Harrow. His response was that it was very much like this 'at home'. I shrank back in my seat, feeling like a strange sort of pauper. Was I actually from a different world? As far as I could tell, I was the only person from a non-selective state school and I felt gauche and very awkward.

So, in a desperate attempt to shift the subject away from 'our lives' - everyone else's seemed much more exciting and moneyed than mine (particularly as I was living in a caravan at the time) - I tried to focus on the one thing we had in common: our love of classics. By now it was about ten at night and our little seventeen and eighteen-year-old selves were pretty wearied from the stress of the day, so the group had thinned and only the slightly-too-bright-eyed obsessives remained. We started to rummage through the JCR's possessions and found a scrabble set. "Come on guys," I said, "let's play Latin scrabble."

Fatal words. Let's call it a desperate attempt to make myself seem like a quirky Oxbridge savant. And needless to say, it was a disaster. You can't really play Latin scrabble on a regular set and we started arguing about acceptable plays, then gave up after about five minutes - possibly after realising we weren't as smart as we thought we were. Maybe that was just me.

However, my complete failure stands in contrast with those who play successfully. I discovered the University of Toronto's page on Latin Scrabble a while ago, which not only sets out rules and permissible moves, but also includes a list of acceptable two-letter words and a pdf of the tile distribution so you can print off and create your very own set of tessellae. And oh the memories, they came flooding back...