SecretsExercises for the Internet

By Philip Hewitt___________________________________________________________________

1. Picking the right wordsChapter 8 of the story is entitled ‘A peek into the past’. There are many other synonyms for

‘look’, including peep, glimpse, glance and gaze. These words can be used as verbs or

nouns. Only one of them can replace ‘look’ and the other words in italics in each of the

following sentences – but which one?

a) I showed her the letter, but she only looked at it quickly.

b) I saw a woman’s face looking at me from behind the curtain.

c) We only got a quick look at (= caught a … of) the Queen as she drove past.

d) For a long time we looked at the beautiful sunset.

Now put these words for various types of noise into the right sentences: scream, shriek, yell,

groan.

e) “Look out!” … the skateboarder. “I’m coming through!”

f) The huge crowd at the stadium … when the Manchester United player missed an easy

penalty.

g) While they were walking through the railway tunnel, the children suddenly heard the … of a

locomotive whistle.

h) When he saw the mouse in the kitchen he jumped onto a chair with a loud …

2. A quick crosswordThis crossword is not difficult. Copy it onto a piece of paper and see if you can complete it within

15 minutes. If you can complete it in less than ten minutes, you are a language genius!

1 2 3 4 5

6

7

8

9

10 11 12 13 14

15 16

17 18

19

Across 1 You don’t want people to know this.

4 Short form of ‘Abraham’.

6 Large Australian bird like an ostrich.

7 Abbreviation for ‘Roman Catholic’.

8 Name and characteristics of a person.

10 Past tense of ‘to bleed’.

13 Pictures which you see while you sleep.

15 He isn’t as clever … me.

16 American word for ‘Mum’.

17 A … of glasses, shoes etc.

18 What are you doing … the weekend?

19 Means the same as ‘come in’.

Down1 Not very comfortable with strangers.

2 To hold somebody lovingly and softly.

3 An important happening.

4 Abbreviation for ‘in the morning’

5 To put something in the ground and cover

it.

6 To go to a new country to start a new life.

9 Idealized picture of something.

11 Gas or water coming slowly out of a

damaged pipe.

12 To have the courage to do something.

14 “I’m lost! I don’t know where I …!”

18 His mother works … a garage in town.

3 Jumbled wordsThese ten sentences are all taken straight from the story. But they will only make sense if you can

‘unjumble’ one of the words. And first you have to decide which word is jumbled.

a) Which of these diks was going to be her new friend?

b) “Do you like gods? We’ve got two.”

c) “They’re waiting for the market to pomiver.”

d) At last she got out of the car and walked up the pests to the front door.

e) Harriet had almost forgotten her mother’s doom of the day before.

f) For the next two hours they wartled the Internet.

g) “I’ll show you our old family mubal after supper,” said Mr Murray.

h) “X marks the tops.”

i) “Martin and Kev are interested in ghosts and the alasunpretur.”

j) He reached into the plastic bag and took out a black face mask, a pair of black vogels and a

doctor’s long white coat.

4 English for fun: reverse spellings, anagrams and palindromes English is a language of short

words, and you can have a lot of fun with them! There are many words in English, particularly short

ones, which have a completely different meaning if they are written back to front, as you can see from

sentences b) and h) in the exercise above: dog – god, tops – spot. Here are some more examples:

lever tug tool room loop pat tin

top bat not pal bog pit pots

Write these words down in a list – forwards and backwards. If you do not know the meaning of any of

the words, look it up in a dictionary and write it down beside the word. See if you can find any more!

An anagram is simply a jumbled word or group of words. Some anagrams of famous people’s names

are very funny. Others have close connections with the original word, name or phrase: Desperation –

a rope ends it; Goodbye – Obey God. Here are ten more names, words or phrases and their

anagrams. See if you can match them up. If you have a problem, just count the letters!

Christine - Bad credit

Listen - Moon starer

The Morse Code - Twelve plus one

Mother-in-law - I’ll make a wise phrase

The Titanic disaster - The great charmer

Debit card - Nice shirt

Margaret Thatcher - Death – it starts in ice

Eleven plus two - Here come dots

Astronomer - Silent

William Shakespeare - Woman Hitler

If you enjoyed this exercise and would like to see – or make – more anagrams, just type “anagram”

on your Internet web browser and download some software. You can start off by finding anagrams for

your own name!

A palindrome is a word or sentence which reads the same forwards or backwards. Some word

palindromes:

level, boob, mum, dad, tot, pop, minim, deed.

Some sentence palindromes:

Was it a rat I saw? / A man, a plan, a canal: Panama! / Do, O God, no evil deed – live on, do good!

Adam (introducing himself to Eve): Madam, I’m Adam.

Eve (angrily to Adam): Name no one man!

5 Use the right conjunctionIt is not always easy to join two sentences together with words like ‘because’, ‘although’ and ‘if’. Try

to find which two parts of the sentence go together and ‘join’ them with the right ‘conjunction’:

Jack still worked at the hospital ever since he had lived in Richmond.

Harrie had never asked her mother what had happened to the head.

The inspector had no idea because he had met Jenny Hargreaves.

Karen had never written to Jack whether she had any secrets.

Arthur Thackray had killed twice before it was no longer open.

Allie had hated the hospital although he had been married.

6. Describing your impressions of a pictureThis is the picture which inspired the author to write the story of Harrie and Allie. Imagine the

thoughts that went through his head when he took this photo and describe your own impressions of

the hospital. Remember: it had been empty for some years before the photo was taken.