Figurative Language and Sound Sorcery

Name the Magic

1000

Identify the main figurative technique and explain it:

"The final train groaned awake beneath the rain."

🎭 The Muse’s Muzzle: Answer within five seconds to select one opposing team's player to answer their next question without help.

Personification. The train is presented as a living creature waking and groaning.

2000

Identify the figurative technique and explain it: 

The moths circled the lamp like loose thoughts refusing sleep.

Simile. The restless movement of the moths is compared to thoughts that continue circling in someone’s mind at night.

3000

Identify the figurative technique and explain the comparison: 

The moths circled the lamp like loose thoughts refusing sleep.

Simile. The restless movement of the moths is compared to thoughts that continue circling in someone’s mind at night.

4000

Identify four techniques in the extract and quote an example of each: 

Thunder rumbled like an old engine at dawn.
Worn-out windows wanked awake, while rain went tick-tick against the rails and morning mourned the death of night. 

🁢 Device Domino: 

Identify all four within 25 seconds to start a Device Domino. Choose two opposing teams and assign each a different technique. They have five seconds to invent an original example.

• Each successful rival earns 500 points.
• Each rival who fails gives your team 1,000 points.

• Personification: “Windows wanked awake” or “morning mourned”, "the death of night"
• Onomatopoeia: “tick-tick”
• Alliteration: “worn-out windows wanked awake”
• Simile: “Thunder rumbled like an old engine”

5000

Which sound technique dominates this sentence? Explain why the answer is not alliteration. 

The clock ticked through the dark, keeping its secret in the brickwork.

Consonance. The hard /k/ sound appears repeatedly in different positions in “clock,” “ticked,” “dark,” “keeping,” "secret"and “brickwork.” It is not alliteration because the repeated sound does not occur only at the beginnings of nearby words.

Metaphor Foundry

1000

Explain the meaning of the metaphor: 

Grief had rented a room within his chest.

The character is compared to a house where grief has remained for a long time and has become a persistent part of his emotional life.

2000

Identify the subject (what it's about), image (what the subject is compared to) and shared qualities (what the subject and image have in common) in this metaphor: 

At dusk, the city became a radio between stations: static, sparks and half-caught voices.

🏴‍☠️ Imagery Heist: Identify all three elements within 50 seconds to steal 2,000 points from another team and take control of the next category selection.  

• Subject: The city at dusk

• Image: A radio between stations

• Shared qualities: Confusion, fragmented sounds, flickering energy and incomplete communication

3000

What two ideas are connected by this simile? 

The abandoned swing moved like a comma the wind had forgotten to finish.

The swing’s curved movement resembles a comma, while the unfinished punctuation suggests interruption, absence or a moment waiting to continue.

4000

Explain how this extended metaphor presents memory: 

Memory is a tide pool after the sea withdraws: small worlds remain, bright and trembling, in the middle of what has vanished.

Memories are compared to pools left behind by the sea. They preserve small, vivid pieces of the past even after the larger experience has disappeared.

5000

Replace “Time passed slowly in the waiting room” with a two-line extended metaphor. 

Your response must:

1. Avoid “like” and “as”
2. Develop one consistent image
3. Include at least two connected details

✒️ The Golden Forge: Produce an original, coherent extended metaphor within 1 minute to transform the question into a 10,000-point Golden Question and gain one shield.

Time was a lift stalled between floors; every blinking number refused to move.

The Impossible and the Alive

1000

Identify the personification and explain its effect: 

The unopened letter crouched beneath the lamp.

The letter is described as “crouching.” This makes it seem secretive, threatening or ready to reveal something unpleasant.

2000

Identify the hyperbole and explain what it suggests:

By the third paragraph, his apology had already outlived three empires.

The apology could not literally last longer than three empires. The exaggeration humorously suggests that it was unbearably long.

3000

Rewrite this sentence using original personification:

Fog covered the harbour.

🗿 Awaken the Ordinary: If the personification is original and you can explain its effect within 40 seconds, you may recover the points lost on your most recent incorrect answer. If you have not lost points, gain 2,000 points instead.

Fog buttoned the harbour inside a coat with no pockets.

4000

Identify the personification and hyperbole:

The staircase swallowed every footstep until the house seemed miles deep.

• Personification: The staircase “swallowed” the footsteps.

• Hyperbole: The house seemed “miles deep.”

• Effect: Together, they make the house appear unnaturally vast, secretive and threatening.

5000

Identify three devices and explain how they work together: 

Night kissed the city into silence. One sleepless window burned for ten thousand hours, guarding a kettle that muttered about small rebellions.

• Personification: Night “kissed” the city.
• Hyperbole: The window burned “for ten thousand hours.”
• Personification: The window is “sleepless,” and the kettle “muttered” and “rebelled.”
• The devices make one ordinary domestic scene appear defiantly alive within a sleeping city.

Sound Sorcery

1000

Identify two examples of onomatopoeia:

Pip-pip, the cooling engine whispered, then clunked into sleep.  

📢 The Echo Tax: Answer within 5 seconds to impose the Echo Tax. Every opposing team must invent a new onomatopoeic word within 10 seconds. Your team gains 500 points for each team that hesitates, repeats a word or gives an invalid example.

“Pip-pip” and “clunked.”

2000

Identify the alliteration and explain its possible effect: 

Copper clouds crowded the coast before rain.

The repeated hard /k/ sound in “copper,” “clouds,” “crowded” and “coast” suggests that the storm clouds are gathering densely and even sounds like thunder.

3000

Identify the sound technique and explain its effect:

Sea-mist slid through the shutters, stitching salt into sleep.

🐍 The Sibilant Serpent: Identify the technique, quote three examples and explain the effect within 20 seconds. Then choose one rival team:

• Steal its shield, if it has one; or
• Silence it for the next question if it has no shield.

Sibilance. The repeated /s/ and /ʃ/ sounds create a whispering, secretive quality that imitates the mist moving quietly into the room.

4000

Match each sentence to its dominant sound technique: assonance or consonance.

A. Low boats floated home over the cold shoals.

B. The dim room hummed around the flame.

• A — Assonance: The long /oʊ/ sound is repeated in “low,” “boats,” “floated,” “home,” “cold” and “shoals.”
• B — Consonance: The /m/ sound is repeated in “dim,” “room,” “hummed” and “flame.”

5000

Identify four sound techniques and explain the atmosphere they create:

Clack—black branches knocked the roof,
while low crows flowed through the cold.

• Onomatopoeia: “Clack” and “knocked”
• Alliteration: “Black branches”
• Consonance: The repeated /k/ sound in “clack,” “black,” “knocked” and “cold”
• Assonance: The repeated long /oʊ/ sound in “low,” “crows,” “flowed” and “cold”
• The hard consonants create an abrupt, knocking rhythm, while the long vowel sounds make the scene feel drawn out, bleak, and spacious.

The Poet’s Laboratory

1000

Identify which sentence contains a metaphor and which contains a simile.

A. The moon was a thumbprint pressed into dusk.

B. The moon hovered like chalk dust above the chimneys.

• A — Metaphor

• B — Simile

2000

 Identify the assonance and consonance:

Pale rain sailed across the lake, tapping the copper steps.

🎼 Resonance Raid: Identify both techniques and quote at least four examples within 20 seconds to steal 2,500 points from the leading team and gain protection from the next point-stealing effect.

• Assonance: The /eɪ/ sound in “pale,” “rain,” “sailed” and “lake”

• Consonance: The repeated /p/ sound in “tapping,” “copper” and “steps”

3000

This sentence contains a confused mixture of images. Why is the imagery inconsistent, and how could it be improved? 

Her voice was a lantern that rooted me to the shore.

A lantern produces or guides with light, not sound, while “rooted” belongs to the image of a plant. The shore introduces a third image, making the metaphor difficult to follow.

Possible revision:

Her voice was a harbour lamp, holding my small boat inside its circle of gold.

4000

Identify four techniques in the extract and explain their combined effect:

At midnight, the archive breathed dust.
Soft pages hissed in their sleep;
one red sentence became a small bird,
pecking at my thoughts until dawn.

🌑 Poetic Eclipse: 

Identify four techniques with evidence within 25 seconds to create a Poetic Eclipse:

• Your team chooses the next question.
• Other teams may not see its text for the first ten seconds.
• Your team gets the first exclusive attempt.
• A correct answer during the eclipse earns double points.

• Personification: The archive “breathed”
• Sibilance: “Soft,” “sleep,” “sentence,” and “small”.
• Onomatopoeia: “Hissed”
• Metaphor: The sentence becomes a bird
• Personification: Pages “sleep,” and the sentence “pecks” at the speaker’s thoughts
• The devices make the archive seem alive, secretive and slightly unsettling. The bird metaphor shows that one idea has become impossible to ignore.

5000

Write two poetic lines describing a storm. Your response must include:

1. A metaphor
2. Personification
3. One sound technique
4. No use of “like” or “as”
5. No familiar clichés

Thunder dragged an iron chair across the attic of the sky; rain stitched every road shut with a silver hiss.

• Metaphor: The sky is presented as an attic.

• Personification: Thunder drags a chair, and rain stitches.

• Sibilance: “Stitched,” “shut” and “silver hiss”

• Onomatopoeia: “Hiss”