Background. "Hardly anyone has the time to write certamen questions just for practice."  A few organizations (such as NJCL and a few state chapters) do publish books of questions from prior certamina.  Though the JCL raises money by selling the books, new editions are infrequent because it takes several years to amass the questions (and often the questions are too difficult for "younger" teams, anyway).  Well-established Latin programs may have collected questions from Ludi and other events over the years, but newer programs and those in areas with less active JCLs do not have this luxury.  These problems were remedied several years ago with the creation of The Certamen Questions Bank (CQB), a venture of the Maryland JCL.  However, in September 1999 I learned from Matthew Webb that, due to time constraints, the CQB will no longer be updated (fortunately the site's questions are still available online).  This was the reason I created the Certamen Question Database - a free source of certamen questions (and other certamen-related materials) instantly accessible to teachers, students, and others.

Certamen Preparation. This material is mainly for students.  You won't find tables comparing different buzzer systems or contact information for national and state certamen chairpersons.  What you will find are lists of common question sources, related study questions, and maybe some helpful study aids provided by other certamen players.  This portion of the database will grow as users provide their input (especially the study aids and mnemonics sections).

Practice Questions. The questions are divided into three categories: Latin I, Latin II, and Advanced (Latin III+).  Generally the higher the level of Latin, the more difficult the questions are.  The difficulty of some question sets has been rated on a four-star system.  One star (*) denotes the lowest level of difficulty, while four stars (****) denote the highest level of difficulty.  Experienced teams, for instance, might choose questions with three to four stars, while beginners might choose questions with only one star.  Questions are listed under the name of the competition in which they were used, when that is known.  When that is unknown or the questions were created expressly for this website, they are listed as "Ignotum."

Caution and Disclaimer.  Because of the possibility that some whiz students might memorize every single question in the database, it is not recommended that you use these questions for competition.  Rather they make an excellent addition to practice games.  I will not be held responsible for any incorrect answers to questions found in the Certamen Questions Database. I do, however, strongly urge you to point out any incorrect answers or other errors that you might find.  Certain restrictions are placed upon the usage of questions and other materials found on this website.  Contact the webmaster for permissions on usage.

Request.  I hope this project will be very useful to you!  Please help by sending old questions or other certamen-related materials, either by e-mail or snail mail.  If you wish, the questions or other certamen-related materials can be returned to you after being added to the database.