Chapter 4 Solutions — The Rattrap

The three words from the story — 'plod' (to walk slowly and heavily, with effort), 'trudge' (to walk with slow, weary steps), and 'stagger' (to move unsteadily, as if about to fall from exhaustion) — all describe effortful, weary locomotion.

Five other words with similar meaning:

1. Shuffle — to walk without lifting the feet properly, dragging them along the ground out of fatigue or listlessness.

2. Lumber — to move in a slow, heavy, awkward manner.

3. Slog — to walk or work doggedly with great effort, especially through difficult terrain or conditions.

4. Totter — to move in a faltering, unsteady way, as though about to collapse.

5. Shamble — to walk with a slow, shuffling, unsteady gait, feet barely leaving the ground.

This question asks for games from your own region. Some examples of traditional Indian indoor games are:

Chopar (also called Chaupar) — a cross-and-circle board game played with cowrie shells as dice, popular across North India.

Carrom — a finger-flicking board game played with small discs on a smooth square board; extremely popular across India.

Pachisi — a traditional board game played on a cross-shaped cloth board, considered the precursor to Ludo.

Ganjifa — a traditional card game played with hand-painted circular cards, once common in royal courts.

Kabaddi (indoor variant) — while primarily an outdoor contact sport, it is sometimes played in indoor settings in a reduced format.

Chess (Shatranj) — an ancient strategy game that originated in India (as Chaturanga) and is played widely indoors.

Antakshari — a popular Indian parlour game in which participants sing songs beginning with the last letter of the previous song.

Different regions have their own specialities: for instance, 'Pallankuzhi' in Tamil Nadu and Kerala uses a carved wooden board with seeds or shells.

A 'crofter' is specifically a Scottish and Nordic term for a tenant who holds and works a small plot of land. Other uncommon or regional terms for a small farmer include:

Yeoman — historically, a small freeholder who farmed his own land in England; implies a degree of independence.

Smallholder — a British English term for a person who owns or rents a small piece of agricultural land.

Peasant farmer — a general term used across cultures for a subsistence-level farmer with a small plot.

Cottager — a rural person who lives in a cottage and works a small adjacent plot of land.

Ryot (Hindi: रैयत, raiyat) — a term used in colonial and pre-colonial India for a tenant farmer or cultivator who held and worked land under a landlord.

Kunbi — a term used in Maharashtra for a traditional farming caste engaged in small-scale cultivation.

Kisan (Hindi: किसान) — the common Hindi/Urdu term for a farmer, often a smallholder in the context of Indian agriculture.

Marginal farmer — the modern administrative term in India for a farmer holding less than one hectare of agricultural land.