Tim Ruiter would have known if he had ever visited Tivoli, where the remains of Maecenas' summer villa can be found, together with the more magnificent Villa Adriana (the palace of Hadrianus, one of my favorite emperors) and the Villa d'Este, renowned for its renaissance frescoes. When in Rome, both edifices are certainly worth a visit, a day's trip even.

Of course, there's also the famous Lithuanian chess player Mikenas, after whom a vicious attacking line of the Modern Benoni has been named. He was a good friend of Paul Keres, the great Estonian grandmaster, and Mischa Tal, the wizard of Riga.

On the other hand, "Laodicean" didn't ring any bells with me, but then again, I've never been much of a believer. As to spelling, Holland and Flanders have their annual "Groot Dictee der Nederlandse Taal". I don't like it too much though, since it invariably contains a lot of French loan words altered by the Dutch (whose committees still dictate the way we are supposed to write our words) to such an amazing degree that we Belgians can only smile. I guess that this is the only time when all Belgians are smiling collectively as a nation (with the exception of the sesquipedalian participants, of course).

I seem to remember that the BBC once had a quiz focusing on the meaning, not the spelling, of difficult words, which again mostly meant words of French, Latin or Greek origin. Not too difficult, but I haven't seen it recently. Too elitarian, perhaps.

Ambulo, ergo sum!