Only the Penitent Man Spells

In 1938, in a temple carved into the rock at Alexandretta, Indiana Jones stands at the edge of a floor of lettered stones and recites the clue from his father’s diary: the name of God. He steps on J — and the stone gives way.

The mistake is a real one. Classical Latin had no letter J. The sound and the shape both lived inside I, and Jehovah was written IEHOVAH straight through the Middle Ages. J only split off into its own letter in the 1500s, when the Italian grammarian Gian Giorgio Trissino argued that the two jobs I was doing deserved two letters. Indy, a man who reads Latin for a living, forgot which century he was standing in.

That’s the whole appeal of the scene for a classroom: getting a word right isn’t decoration. It’s the floor holding.

So I built the floor. Temple Terms — Spell Your Way to Safety is a two-player game where a clue appears on a stone plaque and players spell the answer by stepping on letters scattered across the temple floor. Get it right and the door at the back of the chamber pops open. Get it wrong and the clock keeps running.

The terms are yours. A teacher screen lets you type in your own words and definitions — Civil War, AP Government, standard drink, whatever the unit is — save the bank under a name, and pull it back up next class.

Play Temple Terms →