A man takes a train from London to the coast. He’s visiting a town called Wulfleet. It’s small and old, the kind of place with a pub that’s been pouring pints since the Battle of Bosworth Field. He’s going to write about it for his blog. He’s excited.

He arrives, he checks in. He walks to the cute B&B he’d picked out online. And he writes it all up like any good travel blogger would: in that breezy LiveJournal style from 25 years ago, perhaps, in his case, trying a little too hard.

But as his post goes on, his language gets older. A hundred years older with each jump. The spelling changes. The grammar changes. Words you know are replaced by unfamiliar words, and his attitude gets older too, as the blogger’s voice is replaced by that of a Georgian diarist, an Elizabethan pamphleteer, a medieval chronicler.

By the middle of his post, he’s writing in what might as well be a foreign language.

But it’s not a foreign language. It’s all English.

None of the story is real: not the blogger, not the town. But the language is real, or at least realistic. I constructed the passages myself, working from what we know about how English was written in each period.1

It’s a thousand years of the English language, compressed into a single blog post.

Read it and notice where you start to struggle. Notice where you give up entirely. Then meet me on the other side and I’ll tell you what happened to the language (and the blogger).

You’re reading The Dead Language Society, where 35,000+ readers explore the hidden history of the English language. I’m Colin Gorrie: PhD linguist and your guide through 1,500 years of English being weird.

I publish every Wednesday. Paid subscribers get every issue, the full archive, and the content I’m most proud of: practical guides to reading historical texts yourself, honest takes on how language really works, and live book clubs where we read texts like Beowulf and (up next!) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

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2000

Well, I finally got to the town everyone has been talking about lately. Wulfleet. And let me tell you, it was not easy to get here. It’s ridiculous how close this place is to London, and yet how hard it is to get here. I took a train to some place whose name I can’t pronounce, and then from there I had to hop on a bus. The whole day was shot just getting here.

Not going to lie though: so far, it’s totally worth it.

Yes, it’s the typical English coastal town: the seagulls, the cobblestone streets, the works. But there’s something about it that just makes me want to dress up in a cape and walk around like I’m in a Gothic novel. Although, let’s be honest, do I really need an excuse to do that? :)

Everyone seems really nice here, although I did have one really weird encounter on the way to the B&B. A guy was following me for a while. It kind of freaked me out. Anyway, if you go to Wulfleet, just watch out for this one weird guy who hangs out near the bus stop. I know, real specific. But anyway, that was just a bit odd.

Speaking of which, the B&B is also… interesting. LOL. It has separate hot and cold taps and everything. I’m about to see how the “bed” portion works. I’ll update you on the “breakfast” tomorrow morning. If I can find an internet cafe around here, that is.

1900

My plans for an untroubled sleep were upset, however, when I woke with a start before dawn. The window had, it seemed, come open in the night, though I was perfectly certain I had fastened it. I sprang up from the bed to see what was the cause, but I could see nothing in the darkness — nothing, that is, that I could satisfactorily account for. I closed the window again but was entirely unable to fall asleep due to the shock. I am not, I hope, an easily frightened man, but I confess the incident left me not a little unsettled.

When dawn finally came, I went downstairs to find a well-appointed dining room in which there was laid out a modest but perfectly adequate meal. After I ate, and thanked the landlady — a respectable woman of the kind one expects to find in charge of such an establishment — I decided to take a stroll around the town. The sea air did something to revive me after the events of the previous day, not to mention the night, although a question still weighed on me. Do windows simply burst open in the night? Or was there something else afoot? I resolved to make enquiries, though of whom I was not yet certain.

1800

After spending the day wandering around the environs of the town, and, finding myself hungry, I sought out an inn, where I might buy some supper. It was not difficult to find one, and, sitting alone, I called for supper from what the publican had to offer. I confess I gave no great thought to the quality of the fare. Hunger, that great leveller, makes philosophers of us all, and renders even the meanest dish agreeable.

The place was adequately charming. The tables were covered with guttering candles, and the local rustics seemed to be amusing themselves with great jollity. Reader, I am not one of those travellers who holds himself above the common people of the places he visits. I saw fit rather to join in with their sport and we whiled away the hours together in good cheer. I found them to be as honest and amiable a company as one could wish for.

The only thing that disturbed my good humour was when I thought, for a brief moment, that I saw the man who accosted me yesterday among the crowd. But it must have been a mere fancy, for whatever I thought I saw vanished as quickly as it had appeared. I chided myself for the weakness of my nerves, and took another draught to steady them.

When, at long last, the entertainment was spent, I undertook to return to my lodgings; however, finding myself quite unable to find my way, a fact which owed something to having imbibed rather immoderately in the hours prior — and here let me caution the reader against the particular hospitality of country innkeepers, which is liberal beyond what prudence would advise — I soon found myself at the harbour’s edge.

1700

When I was firſt come to Wulfleet, I did not see the harbour, for I was weary and would ſooner go to the inn, that I might ſleep. It is a truth well known to travellers, that wearineſs of body breeds a kind of blindneſs to all things, however remarkable, and ſo it was with me. But now that I beheld the ſight of it, I marvelled. In the inky blackneſs I could see not a ſtar, nor even a ſliver of the moon. It was indeed a wonder that I did not ſtumble on my way, and periſh in a gutter, for many a man has come to his end by leſs.

Finally, with my mind much filled with reflection, I found my way through dark ſtreets to a familiar alley. This was a welcome sight, as an ill foreboding was lately come into my mind. I entertained for a moment such unmanly thoughts as are far from my cuſtom, and which I ſhould be aſhamed to ſet down here, were it not that an honeſt account requires it. I felt eſpecially that I was purſued by ſome thing unknown to me. I glanced backwards, to ſee if I might eſpy that man. But there was no one, or at least no one that I could diſcern.

At laſt, I found the doorway of the inn, as much by chance as by deſign, and retired to ſleep with a mind addled half by drink and the other half by a fear for which I could not well account. I commended myſelf to Providence, and reſolved to think no more on it.

1600

That night I was vntroubled by such euents as I had vndergone the night before, for I had barred the door ere I ſlept, and so fortified, that so no force might open it. This town of Wulfleet was paſſing ſtrange, as ſtrange I dare ſay as any place whereof Plinie wrote, or any iland discovered in the voyages of Sir Walter Raleigh. But I was bound to my taſk, and would not flinch from it. I would record the occurrents in Wulfleet, howeuer ſtrange they might ſeem, yea, though they were ſuch things as would make a leſſer man forſake his purpoſe.

But I ſoon forgot my earlier dread, for the morning brought with it ſo fair a ſight as to diſpel all feare. The people of the town had erected ouernight a market of ſuch variety and abundance as I haue not ſeen the like. Animals walked among men, and men among animals, a true maruel!

As I looked on this aſſembled throng, greatly pleaſed and not a little amazed, a man approached me. He ſtartled me, but I quickly saw he was nothing but a farmer come to hawke his wares. “Would you haue a fowl, sir?” ſaid he, “My hens are fat and luſty, and you may haue them cheap.”

I said in reply, “No, I thanke thee,” He was a churliſh fellow, rude of ſpeech and meane of aſpect, and I felt no ſhame at thouing ſuch a man as that.

1500

I went forthe among the people, and as I paſſed throughe the market and the ſtretes of the towne, euer lokyng aboute me with grete care, leſt I ſholde agayn encountre ſome peryl, thee appeared, from oute of the prees that ſame man whom I ſo dredde. And he was passyng foule was of vyſage, as it ſemed to me, more foule than ony man I had ſene in al my lyf.

He turned hym towarde me and ſayd, “Straunger, wherefore art thou come hydder?”

And I anſwerd hym nott, for I knewe nott what I ſholde ſaye, ne what answere myght ſerue me beſt in ſuche a caas.

Than hee asked me, “Was it for that thou wouldeſt ſee the Maiſter?”

And verely this name dyd me ſore affright, for who was this Maiſter wherof he ſpake? And what maner of man was he, that his very name ſholde be ſpoken wyth ſuche reuerence and drede. I wolde haue fledde but he purſued me and by myn avys he was the ſwifter, for he caught me full ſoone.

I sayd to him, “What meaneſt thou? Who is the Maiſter?”

And he sayd, “I ſhall brynge the vnto hym, and thou ſhalt ſee for thy ſelf what maner of lorde he is.”

But I wolde not, and cryed out ayenſt hym with grete noyſe, leſt he ſholde take me thyder by violence and ayenſt my wille.

1400

Bot þe man wolde me nat abandone þer, ne suffre me to passen forþ. I miȝt nat flee, for hys companiouns, of whom þer were a gret nombre, beſet me aboute, and heelden me faſt þat I ne scholde nat ascapen. And þei weren stronge menn and wel douȝti, of grymme contenaunce and fiers, and armed wiþ swerdes and wiþ knyues, so þat it were gret foly for eny man to wiþstonden hem.

So þei bounden me hond and foot and ledden me to þe one þei callede Maiſter, of whom I hadde herd so muchel and knewe so litel.

Þe sayde Maiſter, what that hee apperid bifore me, was verely a Deuill, or so me þouȝte, for neuer in al my lyf hadde I beholden so foule a creature. Hee bore a blak clok þat heng to þe grounde, and ſpake neuer a worde. Bot his countenaunce was hidous and so dredful þat my blood wexed colde to loken on hym. For he hadde nat þe visage of a man bot of a beest, wiþ þe teeþ and ſnoute of a wulf, scharpe and crueel. And his eres weren longe eres, as of a wulf, and bihynde him þer heng a gret tayl, as wulf haþ. And hys eyen schon in þe derknesse lyke brennyng coles.

“What wolden ȝe wiþ mee, ȝe heþene?” aſked I, þouȝ myn voys quaked and I hadde litel hope of eny merci.

Bot þei maden no answer, neyþer good ne yuel. Þei weren stille as stoon, and stoden about me as men þat wayte on þeir lordes commandement.

1300

Þanne after muchel tyme spak þe Maiſter, and his wordes weren colde as wintres is. His vois was as þe crying of rauenes, scharpe and schille, and al þat herde hym weren adrade and durst nat speken.

“I deme þe to þe deeþ, straunger. Here ſchaltou dyen, fer fram þi kynne and fer fram þine owen londe, and non ſchal knowen þi name, ne non schal þe biwepe.”

And I sayde to hym, wiþ what boldenesse I miȝte gaderen, “Whi fareſt þou wiþ me þus? What treſpaas haue I wrouȝt ayeins þe, þat þou demeſt me so harde a dome?”

“Swie!” quoþ he, and smot me wiþ his honde, so þat I fel to þe erþe. And þe blod ran doun from mi mouþe.

And I swied, for þe grete drede þat was icumen vpon mee was more þan I miȝte beren. Mi herte bicam as stoon, and mi lymes weren heuy as leed, and I ne miȝte namore stonden ne spoken.

Þe euele man louȝ, whan that he sawe my peine, and it was a crueel louȝter, wiþouten merci or pitee as of a man þat haþ no rewþe in his herte.

Allas! I scholde neuer hauen icumen to þis toune of Wuluesfleete! Cursed be þe dai and cursed be þe houre þat I first sette foot þerinne!

1200

Hit is muchel to seggen all þat pinunge hie on me uuroȝten, al þar sor and al þat sorȝe. Ne scal ic nefre hit forȝeten, naht uuhiles ic libbe!

Ac þer com me gret sped, and þat was a uuif, strong and stiþ! Heo com in among þe yuele men and me nerede fram heore honden.

Heo sloȝ þe heþene men þat me pyneden, sloȝ hem and fælde hem to þe grunde. Þer was blod and bale inouȝ And hie feollen leien stille, for hie ne miȝten namore stonden. Ac þe Maister, þe uuraþþe Maister, he flaȝ awei in þe deorcnesse and was iseon namore.

Ic seide hire, “Ic þanke þe, leoue uuif, for þu hauest me ineredd from dæðe and from alle mine ifoan!”

1100

Þæt ƿif me andsƿarode and cƿæð, “Ic eom Ælfgifu gehaten. Þu scalt me to ƿife nimen, þeah þe þu hit ne ƿite gyt, for hit is sƿa gedon þæt nan man ne nan ƿif ne mote heonon faren buten þurh þone dæð þæs Hlafordes.”

“Ac þær is gyt mare to donne her, forþi ƿe nabbaþ þone Hlaford ofslagenne. He is strong and sƿiðe yfel, and manige gode men he hæfð fordone on þisse stoƿe.”

“Is þæt soð?” cƿæþ ic, forþon þe ic naht ne ƿiste. “Ic ƿende þæt ic mihte heonon faren sƿa ic com.”

“Gea la,” cƿæð heo. “Hit is eall soð, and ƿyrse þonne þu ƿenst.”

1000

And þæt heo sægde wæs eall soþ. Ic ƿifode on hire, and heo ƿæs ful scyne ƿif, ƿis ond ƿælfæst. Ne gemette ic næfre ær sƿylce ƿifman. Heo ƿæs on gefeohte sƿa beald swa ænig mann, and þeah hƿæþere hire andƿlite wæs ƿynsum and fæger.

Ac ƿe naƿiht freo ne sindon, for þy þe ƿe næfre ne mihton fram Ƿulfesfleote geƿitan, nefne ƿe þone Hlaford finden and hine ofslean. Se Hlaford hæfþ þisne stede mid searocræftum gebunden, þæt nan man ne mæg hine forlætan. Ƿe sindon her sƿa fuglas on nette, swa fixas on ƿere.

And ƿe hine secaþ git, begen ætsomne, ƿer ond ƿif, þurh þa deorcan stræta þisses grimman stedes. Hƿæþere God us gefultumige!

The blog ends there. No sign-off, no “thanks for reading.” Just a few sentences in a language that most of us lost the ability to follow somewhere around the thirteenth century.

So, how far did you get?

Let me take you back through it.

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The calm after the storm (1700–2000)

Written English has been remarkably stable over the last 300 years. Spelling was standardized in the mid-1700s, and grammar has barely changed at all. This means that, if you can read Harry Potter (1997–2003), you can read Robinson Crusoe (1719), which is good news to fans of the English novel.

What has changed is the voice.

Blog post became diary entry became travel letter. The format changed much faster than the language. Compare the very first line, “Well, I finally got to the town everyone has been talking about lately” with the line from the 1800 section, “Hunger, that great leveller, makes philosophers of us all, and renders even the meanest dish agreeable.”

They’re both performances of a sort: the 2000s protagonist is performing for his blog’s audience, so the tone is chatty and personal. The 1800s protagonist, with the mind of a Georgian diarist, is performing for posterity, so he philosophizes.

The one visible change in the language itself is the appearance, in the 1700 passage, of the long s (ſ). This wasn’t a different letter, just a variant form of s used in certain positions within a word. It disappeared fully from English printing in the early 19th century, although its use was dwindling even before that, which is why it does not appear in the 1800 passage. It’s a typographic change rather than a linguistic one, but it’s the first unmistakable sign that the text is getting older.2

Slowly, then all at once (1400–1600)

This is where the ground starts to move under our feet.3

Before the mid 1700s, there was no such thing as standardized spelling. Writers spelled words as they heard them, or as they felt like spelling them, which is why the 1500s and 1600s sections look so alien, even when the words, underneath the surface, are ones you know.

For another difficulty, take the word vntroubled from the 1600 section. This is our familiar untroubled, but the u is replaced by a v, because u and v were not yet considered separate letters. They were variants of the same latter, used to represent both sounds. The convention was to write v at the beginning of words and u in the middle, which give us spelling like vnto (unto), euents (events), ouernight (overnight), and howeuer (however). It looks weird at first, but once you know the rule, the words become much more readable.

Another new arrival — or, more accurately, late departure — from the language is the letter thorn (þ), which first appears in the 1400 section. Thorn is simply th. That’s it. Wherever you see þ, read th, and the word will usually reveal itself: þe is the, þei is they, þat is that. If you’ve ever seen a pub called “Ye Olde” anything, that ye is actually þe, an attempt by early printers to write a thorn without having to make an expensive new letter.

Thorn’s companion, yogh (ȝ), is more complicated. It represents sounds that modern English spells as gh or y — so miȝt is might, ȝe is ye. The reasons for this are a story unto themselves.

But the most interesting change in this period isn’t a letter. Rather, it’s a pronoun. Notice the moment in the 1600 section where our blogger meets a farmer and says, “No, I thanke thee.” Then he adds, “I felt no ſhame at thouing ſuch a man as that.”

Thouing. To thou someone, or to use thou when talking to them, was, by the 1600s, a deliberate social statement. Thou was the old singular form of you; you was originally the plural. Over the centuries, you came to be used as a polite singular, much as French uses vous. Gradually, you took over entirely. By Shakespeare’s time (1564–1616), thou survived in two main contexts: intimacy (as in prayer) and insult. Our blogger is being a little rude here. He’s looking down on a man he considers beneath him, and his language gives him a way of making his feelings perfectly clear.

Over the wall (1000–1300)

Somewhere in this section — and if you’re like most readers, it happened around 1300 or 1200 — the language crossed a boundary. Up to this point, comprehension felt like it was dropping gradually, but now it’s fallen off a cliff. In one section, you could get by by squinting and guessing; in the next you were utterly lost. You have hit the wall.4

There are two reasons for this. The first is vocabulary. As you move backwards in time, the French and Latin loanwords that make up an enormous proportion of the Modern English vocabulary grow fewer and fewer. When you pass 1250, they drop off almost altogether. Where a modern writer would say he underwent torture, a 1200-era writer must say that he suffered pinunge instead.5

The farther back you go, the more the familiar Latinate layer of English is stripped away, revealing the Germanic core underneath: a language that looks to modern eyes more like German or Icelandic than anything we’d call English.

The second reason for the difficulty is grammar. Old English (450–1100) was an inflected language: it used endings on nouns, adjectives, and verbs to mark their grammatical roles in a sentence, much as Latin or modern German do. Alongside these endings came a greater freedom in word order, which makes sense given that the endings told you who was doing what to whom.

English lost most of these endings over the course of the period linguists call Middle English (1100–1450), and it tightened its word order as if to compensate. When you look at these final sections, if you can make out the words, you will see the effects of this freer word order. For example, in 1200 we read monige gode men he hæfð fordone ‘many good men he has destroyed’, where we’d expect a Modern English order more like and he has destroyed many good men.

To make matters worse, a few unfamiliar letters also appear: wynn (ƿ) is simply w, eth (ð) means the same as thorn (þ) — both represent th, and ash (æ) represents the vowel in cat and hat.6:

All of these factors combined likely made it difficult, if not impossible, to follow the plot. So let me tell you what happened. In the 1400 section, the blogger was seized. He was dragged before a creature they called the Master, and the Master was no man. He had the teeth and snout of a wolf, as well as a wolf’s long ears and great tail. His eyes glowed like burning coals. Wulfleet was once Wulfesfleot ‘the Bay of the Wolf.’

In the 1300 section, the Master condemned our hero to death. In the 1200 section, a woman appeared and killed his captor. The Master, however, fled into the darkness. In the 1100 section, the woman revealed her name: Ælfgifu ‘gift of the elves.’ She told the blogger — can we still call him that in 1100? — they would marry, and she shares the terrible truth about Wulfleet: no one leaves until the Master is dead.

In the 1000 section, they are married. She is, he writes, as bold as any man in battle, and yet fair of face. But they are not free. Together, through the dark streets of Wulfleet, they hunt the Master still.

The English in which I write this paragraph is not the English of fifty years ago, and it will not be the English of fifty years in the future.

Go back far enough, and English writing becomes unrecognisable. Go forward far enough and the same thing will happen, though none of us will be around to notice.

Our poor blogger didn’t notice either, even as he and his language travelled back in time through the centuries. He just kept writing even as he was carried off to somewhere he couldn’t come back from. Some say that, far away in Wulfleet, he’s writing still.

HBO has another critically acclaimed hit with A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, based on George R.R. Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, and it deserves every bit of the praise heaped upon it. The immensely satisfying first season wrapped with last night's finale, dealing with the tragedy of the penultimate episode and setting the stage for the further adventures of Dunk and Egg. House of the Dragon is a solid series, but Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has reminded staunch GoT fans of everything they loved about the original series in the first place.

(Spoilers below, but no major reveals until after the second gallery. We'll give you a heads up when we get there.)

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms adapts the first novella in the series, The Hedge Knight, and is set more than 50 years after the events of House of the Dragon. Dunk (Peter Claffey) is a lowly hedge knight who has just buried his aged mentor, Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb). Ser Arlan was perhaps not the kindest of mentors and often stone drunk, but at least he was hung like the proverbial horse—as viewers discovered in a full-frontal moment that instantly went viral. Lacking any good employment options, Dunk decides to enter a local tournament, since he has inherited Ser Arlan's sword, shield, and three horses.

En route, he stops at an inn, where a bald-headed child who goes by Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) asks if he can be Dunk's squire. Dunk refuses at first, but Egg follows him and Dunk reluctantly agrees. He christens himself Ser Duncan the Tall but finds he cannot enter the tournament without a knight or lord to vouch for him—someone who remembered Ser Arlan. Dunk strikes out again and again, until he meets Prince Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen (Bertie Carvel), son of King Daeron II and heir to the Iron Throne. Baelor remembers Arlan and vouches for Dunk.

As they await their turn at the tournament, Dunk and Egg are drafted into a friendly game of tug-of-war by Ser Lyonel Baratheon (Daniel Ings), aptly known as the "Laughing Storm." They attend a puppet show starring the Dornish-borne Tanselle (Tanzyn Crawford); Egg is enthralled by the showmanship, while Dunk is enamored of Tanselle. And the pair bond further on the first day of the tournament, cheering with excitement at the jousting knights.

But this is Westeros, and nobody's truly happy for long. Prince Aerion "Brightflame" Targaryen (Finn Bennett)—nephew to Baelor, son of Prince Maekar "The Anvil" Targaryen (Sam Spruell)—has also entered the tournament, and he's the spoiled and vicious black sheep of the family. His lack of honor is firmly established when he deliberately lances his opponent's horse to dismount him, effectively ending the day's festivities. It's only a matter of time before Dunk runs afoul of Aerion.

A humble hedge knight

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is just plain great storytelling, with excellent pacing, unexpected twists, and a much lighter tone than its predecessors, which makes the inevitable tragic moments that much more powerful. The episodes are short, and there are only six of them, so there is no padding whatsoever, yet somehow the main characters are fully drawn and compelling. The Game of Thrones franchise has always excelled at spectacular battle sequences on a grand scale. Here we get the same heart-pounding excitement on the smaller scale of jousting at a country tournament. The clever camerawork makes the viewer feel they're in the center of the action, often showing the combatants' viewpoints through the slits in their helmets.

The casting is inspired. Claffey, a former rugby player turned actor, is Dunk incarnate: tall and strong with a heart as big as his frame and a naively earnest belief in the knight's code of honor. Ings' Lyonel Baratheon oozes ribald charisma—he's very fond of bawdy tavern songs—and one can see hints of what Game of Thrones’ King Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy) might have been like as a young and handsome warrior lord (before he got old and fat and fatefully encountered that wild boar). Carvel infuses Baelor with quiet strength and dignity, while Bennett is suitably menacing as Aerion to give us a colorful villain who's fun to hate.

Yet young Ansell, at just 11 years old, outshines them all as Egg, bringing a perfect blend of intelligence, spunk, vulnerability, and disquieting maturity to his performance. Ansell had minor roles in the British soap Emmerdale and as young Coriolanus Snow in The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, but this is his first starring role. May there be many more. His chemistry with Claffey makes you believe in Dunk and Egg's friendship and root for them to succeed. It's a wonderful dynamic. But can their bond withstand the big reveal of Egg's true identity? (Of course it can, but not before a tearful, heartfelt clearing of the air.)

(WARNING: Major spoilers below. Stop reading now if you haven't finished watching the series or haven't read the books.)

A "trial by seven"

As any fan of the books can tell you, Egg is short for Aegon—Aegon Targaryen, Aerion's younger brother, who ran away after his other older brother, Prince Daeron (Henry Ashton), refused to enter the tournament. Egg was so looking forward to being his squire and latched onto Dunk instead, but he can't protect him from Aerion's wrath. Dunk ends up in a prison cell and must prove his innocence in fine Westeros fashion: trial by combat, specifically a trial by seven, which means he needs six other knights to fight with him. Dunk is one man short until Baelor unexpectedly steps in as the seventh.

And that brings us to the seismic events of the penultimate episode (a GoT tradition). The joust is brutal. Aerion is the more skilled fighter, but Dunk has the size and strength advantage, so each inflicts significant bodily damage on the other. And just when you think Dunk has lost, he rises again and defeats Aerion, forcing him to withdraw his accusation. Dunk's team suffers a couple of casualties, but everyone is relieved that Baelor has survived.

Dunk kneels and swears his loyalty in gratitude, which is when Ser Raymun (Shaun Thomas) notices the prince's crushed helmet. Baelor has been mortally wounded by his own brother Maekar's mace. He collapses and dies as a sobbing Dunk cradles his body, deftly setting up the season finale, in which everyone must deal with the aftermath.

The heir to the Iron Throne is dead—a good man who would have been an excellent king. A humble hedge knight has somehow changed the future of Westeros, and chances are it won't be for the better. So what does Dunk do now? Ser Lyonel offers him a place at Storm's End, but Dunk refuses, believing that he will just bring bad luck. Maekar offers him a position at the Targaryen Summerhall castle so that Egg can be his squire; his influence might actually prevent Egg from turning into a jerk like Aerion (whose penance is exile to the Free Cities). Again, Dunk declines, to Egg's chagrin. But when Dunk leaves town to strike out on his own as an itinerant knight, Egg runs away again and joins him.

There are, of course, tons of Easter eggs for diehard Westeros fans, but one is particularly worth mentioning: a fortune-teller tells Egg that he will be king one day but die horribly in flames. "Why would she say that?" an understandably upset Egg asks. It's a reference to a bit of Westeros lore only mentioned in passing in Martin's many books: the tragedy at Summerhall. Egg becomes King Aegon V with Dunk heading up the Kingsguard. They were both killed by wildfire (along with many others), and Summerhall was destroyed in what was most likely Aegon's attempt to hatch new dragons out of seven surviving dragon eggs. So not even Dunk and Egg get a truly happy ending.

All episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms are now streaming on HBO. It was renewed for a second season—which will be based on The Sworn Sword—before the first episode even aired, and I eagerly await what comes next for our unlikely heroes.

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In Formula One, grip is everything. The world's best engineers devote their careers to designing cars that maximize downforce and grip to squeeze every bit of performance out of a set of four humble tires. These cars punish their drivers by slinging them at six Gs through corners and offer similar levels of abuse in braking.

It's all wildly impressive, but I've long maintained that those drivers are not the ones having the most fun. When it comes to sheer enjoyment, grip is highly overrated, and if you want proof of that, you need to try ice racing.

Should you be lucky enough to live somewhere that gets cold enough consistently enough, all you need is a good set of tires and a car that's willing and able. That, of course, and a desire to spend more time driving sideways than straight. I've been ice racing for well over 20 years now, and I'm here to tell you that there's no greater thrill on four wheels than sliding through a corner a few inches astern of a hard-charging competitor.

Here's how you can get started.

For street legal classes, you don't even need a roll cage. Just the right tires and the right attitude. Credit: Tim Stevens

Ice racing basics

There are certainly plenty of professionals out there who have dabbled in or got their start in ice racing, F1 legend Alain Prost and touring car maestro Peter Cunningham being two notable examples. And a European ice racing series called Trophée Andros formerly challenged some of the world's top professionals to race across a series of purpose-built frozen tracks in Europe and even Quebec.

These days, however, ice racing is an almost entirely amateur pursuit, a low-temp, low-grip hobby where the biggest prize you're likely to bring home on any given Sunday is a smile and maybe a little trophy for the mantel.

That said, there are numerous types of ice racing. The most common and accessible is time trials, basically autocrosses on ice. The Sports Car Club of Vermont ice time trial series is a reliable, well-run example, but you'll find plenty of others, too.

Some other clubs step it up by hosting wheel-to-wheel racing on plowed ovals. Lakes Region Ice Racing Club in Moultonborough, New Hampshire, is a long-running group that has been blessed with enough ice lately to keep racing even as temperatures have increased.

At the top tier, though, you're looking at clubs that plow full-on road courses on the ice, groups like the Adirondack Motor Enthusiast Club (AMEC), based in and around the Adirondack Park. Established in 1954, this is among the oldest ice racing clubs in the world and the one I've been lucky to be a member of since 2002.

AMEC offers numerous classes, providing eligibility for everything from a bone-stock Miata to purpose-built sprint cars that look like they made a wrong turn off a dirt oval. Dedicated volunteers plow courses on lakes throughout the ADK, tirelessly searching for ice of sufficient depth and quality.

Different clubs have different requirements, but most like to see a foot of solid, clean ice. That may not sound like much, but according to the US Army Corps of Engineers, it's plenty for eight-ton trucks. That's enough to support not only the 60 to 100 racers that AMEC routinely sees on any frigid Sunday but also the numerous tow rigs, trailers, and plow trucks that support the action.

How do you get started? All you need is a set of tires.

Tires

Tires are the most talked-about component of any car competing on the ice, and for good reason. Clubs have different regulations for what is and is not legal for competition, but in general, you can lump ice racing tires into three categories.

The first is unstudded, street-legal tires, such as Bridgestone Blizzacks, Continental WinterContacts, and Michelin X-Ices. These tires generally have chunky, aggressive treads, generous siping, and squishy compounds. Modern snow tires like these are marvelous things, and when there's a rough surface on the ice or some embedded snow, an unstudded tire can be extremely competitive, even keeping up with a street-legal studded tire.

These tires, like the Nokian Hakkapeliitta 10 and the Pirelli Winter Ice Zero, take the chunky, aggressive tread pattern of a normal snow tire and embed some number of metallic studs. These tiny studs, which typically protrude only 1 millimeter from the tire surface, provide a massive boost in grip on smooth, polished ice.

Tim races on Nokian Hakka 10 tires, which are a street-legal studded winter tire. Credit: Tim Stevens

Finally, there is what is broadly called a "race stud" tire, which is anything not legal for road use. These tires range from hand-made bolt tires, put together by people who have a lot of patience and who don't mind the smell of tire sealant, to purpose-built race rubber of the sort you'll see on a World Rally car snow stage.

These tires offer massive amounts of grip—so much so that the feel they deliver is more like driving on dirt than on ice. Unless you DIY it, the cost typically increases substantially as well. For that reason, going to grippier tires doesn't necessarily mean more fun for your dollar, but there are plenty of opinions on where you'll find the sweet spot of smiles per mile.

Driver skills

The other major factor in finding success on the ice is driver skill. If you have some experience in low-grip, car-control-focused driving like rally or drift, you'll have a head start over someone who's starting fresh. But if I had a dollar for every rally maestro or drifter I've seen swagger their way out onto the ice and then wedge their car straight into the first snowbank, I'd have at least five or six extra dollars to my name.

Ice racing is probably the purest and most challenging form of low-grip driving. On ice, the performance envelope of a normal car on normal tires is extremely small. Driving fast on ice, then, means learning how to make your car do what you want, even when you're far outside of that envelope.

There are many techniques involved, but it all starts with getting comfortable with entering your car into a slide and sustaining it. Learning to balance your car in a moderate drift, dancing between terminal understeer (plowing into the snowbank nose-first) and extreme oversteer (spinning into the snowbank tail-first), is key. That comfort simply takes time.

Reading the ice

The condition of the track changes constantly. Credit: Tim Stevens

Once you figure out how to keep your car going in the right direction, and once you stop making sedan-shaped holes in snowbanks, the next trick is to learn how to read the ice.

The grip level of the ice constantly evolves throughout the day. The street-legal tires tend to polish it off, wearing down rougher sections into smoothly polished patches with extremely low grip. The race studs, on the other hand, chew it up again, creating a heavily textured surface.

If you're on the less extreme sorts of tires, you'll find the most grip on that rough, unused ice. In a race stud, you want to seek out smooth, clean ice because it will give your studs better purchase.

If you're familiar with road racing, it's a little like running a rain line: not necessarily driving the shortest path around, but instead taking the one that offers the most grip. Imagine a rain line that changes every lap and you start to get the picture.

How can I try it?

Intrigued? The good news is that ice racing is among the most accessible and affordable forms of motorsport on the planet, possibly second only to autocrossing. Costs vary widely, but in my club, AMEC, a full day of racing costs $70. That's for three heat races and a practice session. Again, all you need is a set of snow tires, which will last the full season if you don't abuse them.

The bad news, of course, is that you need to be close to an ice racing club. They're getting harder and harder to find, and active clubs generally have shorter seasons with fewer events. If you can't find one locally, you may need to travel, which increases the cost and commitment substantially.

If cost is no issue, you certainly have more opportunities. We've already reported on McLaren's program, but it's not alone. Exotic brands like Ferrari and Lamborghini also offer winter driving programs, where you can wheel amazing cars in glamorous places like St. Moritz and Livigno. The cost is very much in the "if you have to ask" category.

Dirtfish, one of the world's greatest rally schools, also offers an ice-driving program in Wisconsin, starting at about $2,000 for a single day. This is a great, if expensive, way to get a feel for the skills you'll need on ice.

And if you just want the most seat time, look for programs like Lapland Ice Driving or Ice Drive Sweden. The northern wilds of Sweden and Finland are full of frozen lakes where clubs plow out full race courses, sometimes repeating Formula One circuits. If you have the funds, you can rent any manner of sports car and run it sideways all day long on proper studded tires.

Whatever it costs and whatever you have to do to make it happen, ice racing is well worth the effort. I've been lucky to drive a long list of amazing cars in amazing places, but nothing comes close to the joy of wheeling my 20-year-old Subaru around a frozen lake.

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Last night, Tesla made some hefty cuts to Cybertruck pricing in an effort to stimulate some sales. The bombastic tri-motor "Cyberbeast" is $15,000 cheaper at $99,990, albeit by dropping some previously free features like supercharging and FSD. And there's now a new $59,990 entry-level model, a dual-motor configuration with a range of 325 miles (523 km) and the same 4.1-second 0–60 mph (0-97 km/h) time as the $79,990 premium all-wheel drive version.

That actually makes the new entry-level model a good deal, at least in terms of Cybertrucks. Last year, the company introduced and then eliminated a single-motor rear-wheel drive variant, which found few takers when priced at $69,990; an extra motor for $10,000 less is quite a savings, and actually slightly cheaper than the price originally advertised for the RWD truck.

As you might expect, Tesla has made some changes to get down to the new price. The range and 0–60 mph time might be the same as the more expensive dual-motor Cybertruck, but towing capacity is reduced from 11,000 lbs (4,990 kg) to 7,000 lbs (3,175kg), and cargo capacity drops from 2,500 lbs (1,134 kg) to 2,006 lbs (910 kg).

Steel springs and adaptive dampers replace the air suspension. There are different tail lights. The inside features textile seats—maybe someone there reads Ars—but the cheapest Cybertruck does without seat ventilation for the front row or seat heaters for the second row. There's also a different console, no AC outlets in the cabin, and fewer speakers, with no active noise-cancellation system.

But it's still $20,000 more expensive than Elon Musk told us it would be during the angular, unpainted vehicle's reveal back in 2019. Back then, Musk promised a $39,900 price tag, as well as a few other things that never saw the light of day, like a true monocoque construction.

Designing and building the odd-looking vehicle proved particularly troublesome for Tesla, which has never found those processes particularly easy. While other new Tesla models found themselves mired in "production hell," in 2023, Musk said that "we dug our own grave with the Cybertruck."

Indeed, if the company based its business plans on the public sales projections of 250,000 trucks a year—something Musk said would happen by 2025—that certainly would be a problem.

Appealing to neither traditional pickup truck buyers, who have largely rejected going to electric vehicles, nor the majority of EV enthusiasts even before Musk's politics further soured things, fewer than 39,000 Cybertrucks were sold in 2024, and just over 20,000 found homes in 2025. The Edsel might be Ford's most famous failure, but even it posted superior sales numbers during its relatively brief life.

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With HBO's critically acclaimed A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms gearing up for its season finale on Sunday, it's time to check in on that other Game of Thrones spinoff: the far darker House of the Dragon, which now has a suitably ominous teaser for its upcoming third season.

(Spoilers for the first two seasons below.)

The series is set nearly 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones, when dragons were still a fixture of Westeros, and chronicles the beginning of the end of House Targaryen’s reign. The primary source material is Fire and Blood, a fictional history of the Targaryen kings written by George R.R. Martin. As book readers know, those events culminated in a civil war and the extinction of the dragons—at least until Daenerys Targaryen came along.

The first season spanned many years and featured some pretty significant time jumps, which required replacing the younger actors as their characters aged. For those who might need a refresher: King Viserys (Paddy Considine) died, and his second wife, Alicent (Olivia Cooke), conspired with her father, Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), to crown her eldest son, Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney), as king instead of Viserys’ declared heir apparent, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy).

Even though she was technically the rightful heir, Rhaenyra actually seemed to be considering House Hightower’s conditions for concession—until the arrogant Prince Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), Alicent’s younger son, went after Rhaenyra’s young son, Lucerys (Elliot Grihault). Both dragonriders failed to control their dragons, and Aemon’s much bigger dragon, Vhagar, gobbled up poor Lucerys and his little dragon, Arrax, in mid-air. The season closed with Rhaenyra and her husband/uncle Daemon (Matt Smith) receiving the devastating news, effectively dashing any hope of a peaceful resolution.

House of the Dragon has always taken a leisurely, more focused approach to its characters' political maneuverings, interspersed with bursts of bloody violence, and S2 was no exception. But it opened with a bang: the infamous “Blood and Cheese” incident (well-known to book readers), in which assassins sent to take out Aemond as vengeance for Lucerys can't find him and butcher Aegon's eldest son instead. We lost a couple more dragons and several supporting characters in the ensuing chaos, and Aegon was so severely wounded that Aemond became regent—with no plan to relinquish the Iron Throne any time soon.

Dance of Dragons = Death

What we didn't get to see: the spectacularly brutal Battle of the Gullet, the bloody conflict at sea that will now be a centerpiece action sequence for S3 after HBO trimmed S2's episode count from 10 to eight. But the finale teed it up perfectly, as Rhaenyra finally declared outright dragon war (the nuclear option) following Aemond's reckless destruction of Sharp Point. As for Aegon, he went into hiding in Braavos, intending to wait out the war before reclaiming his throne.

Much of the main cast—those whose characters survived S2, that is—are returning, including the aforementioned D'Arcy, Cooke, Smith, Glynn-Carney, Ifans, and Mitchell. Also returning: Steve Toussaint as Corlys; Sonoya Mizuno as Mysaria; Fabien Frankel as Criston Cole; Matthew Needham as Larys; Jefferson Hall as Jason and Tyland Lannister; Harry Collett as Jacaerys; Bethany Antonia as Baela; Phoebe Campbell as Rhaena; Phia Saban as Helaena; Kurt Egyiawan as Orwyle; Kieran Bew as Hugh Hammer; Abubakar Salim as Alyn of Hull; Clinton Liberty as Addam of Hull; Tom Bennett as Ulf White; Freddie Fox as Gwayne Hightower; and Gayle Rankin as Alys Rivers.

Joining the cast for S3 are James Norton as Ormund Hightower; Tommy Flanagan as Roderick Dustin; Dan Fogler as Torrhen Manderly; Tom Cullen as Luthor Largent; Joplin Sibtain as Jon Roxton; Barry Sloane as Adrian Redford; and Annie Shapero as Alysanne Blackwood.

The third season of House of the Dragon premieres on HBO this June. Look, we know this story doesn't end well for anyone. It's Westeros. But we also know we can expect a wild ride.

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The English-language edition of Wikipedia is blacklisting Archive.today after the controversial archive site was used to direct a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against a blog.

In the course of discussing whether Archive.today should be deprecated because of the DDoS, Wikipedia editors discovered that the archive site altered snapshots of webpages to insert the name of the blogger who was targeted by the DDoS. The alterations were apparently fueled by a grudge against the blogger over a post that described how the Archive.today maintainer hid their identity behind several aliases.

"There is consensus to immediately deprecate archive.today, and, as soon as practicable, add it to the spam blacklist (or create an edit filter that blocks adding new links), and remove all links to it," stated an update today on Wikipedia's Archive.today discussion. "There is a strong consensus that Wikipedia should not direct its readers towards a website that hijacks users' computers to run a DDoS attack (see WP:ELNO#3). Additionally, evidence has been presented that archive.today's operators have altered the content of archived pages, rendering it unreliable."

More than 695,000 links to Archive.today are distributed across 400,000 or so Wikipedia pages. The archive site, which is facing an investigation in which the FBI is trying to uncover the identity of its founder, is commonly used to bypass news paywalls.

"Those in favor of maintaining the status quo rested their arguments primarily on the utility of archive.today for verifiability," said today's Wikipedia update. "However, an analysis of existing links has shown that most of its uses can be replaced. Several editors started to work out implementation details during this RfC [request for comment] and the community should figure out how to efficiently remove links to archive.today."

Editors urged to remove links

Guidance published as a result of the decision asked editors to help remove and replace links to the following domain names used by the archive site: archive.today, archive.is, archive.ph, archive.fo, archive.li, archive.md, and archive.vn. The guidance says editors can remove Archive.today links when the original source is still online and has identical content; replace the archive link so it points to a different archive site, like the Internet Archive, Ghostarchive, or Megalodon; or "change the original source to something that doesn't need an archive (e.g., a source that was printed on paper), or for which a link to an archive is only a matter of convenience."

The Wikipedia guidance points out that the Internet Archive and its website, Archive.org, are "uninvolved with and entirely separate from archive.today." The Internet Archive is a nonprofit based in the US.

As we previously reported, malicious code in Archive.today's CAPTCHA page was used to direct a DDoS against the Gyrovague blog written by a man named Jani Patokallio. The Archive.today maintainer demanded that Patokallio take down a 2023 blog post that discussed the archive site founder's possible identity. Patokallio wasn't able to determine who runs Archive.today but mentioned apparent aliases such as "Denis Petrov" and "Masha Rabinovich," and described evidence that the site is operated by someone from Russia.

When we last wrote about this topic, the Archive.today maintainer told Ars Technica that it would not provide any comment on the Wikipedia discussion unless we removed references to Patokallio's blog, which we did not do.

Archive.today maintainer sent threats

Patokallio told Ars today that he is pleased by the Wikipedia community's decision. "I'm glad the Wikipedia community has come to a clear consensus, and I hope this inspires the Wikimedia Foundation to look into creating its own archival service," he told us.

In emails sent to Patokallio after the DDoS began, "Nora" from Archive.today threatened to create a public association between Patokallio’s name and AI porn and to create a gay dating app with Patokallio’s name. These threats were discussed by Wikipedia editors in their deliberations over whether to blacklist Archive.today, and then editors noticed that Patokallio’s name had been inserted into some Archive.today captures of webpages.

"Honestly, I'm kind of in shock," one editor wrote. "Just to make sure I'm understanding the implications of this: we have good reason to believe that the archive.today operator has tampered with the content of their archives, in a manner that suggests they were trying to further their position against the person they are in dispute with???"

"If this is true it essentially forces our hand, archive.today would have to go," another editor replied. "The argument for allowing it has been verifiability, but that of course rests upon the fact the archives are accurate, and the counter to people saying the website cannot be trusted for that has been that there is no record of archived websites themselves being tampered with. If that is no longer the case then the stated reason for the website being reliable for accurate snapshots of sources would no longer be valid."

Blog capture tampered with

One example discussed by Wikipedia editors involved Jani Patokallio's name being inserted into an Archive.today capture of a blog post that was mentioned by Patokallio in his February 2026 writeup of the DDoS incident. This blog is related to the "Nora" alias used by the Archive.today maintainer, which now appears to be the name of an actual person.

"It appears increasingly likely that the identity of 'Nora' has been appropriated from an actual person, whose only connection to archive.today was a request to take down some content," Patokallio wrote in an update to his blog today. "As a courtesy, I have redacted their last name from this post."

Evidence presented in the Wikipedia discussion showed that Archive.today replaced Nora's name with Patokallio's name in the aforementioned blog post. The Archive.today capture has since been reverted to what appears to be the original version. In other cases, Archive.today captures included a "Comment as: Jani Patokallio" string on captures that previously had a "Comment as: Nora [last name redacted]" string.

Even if the snapshot alterations hadn't helped convinced Wikipedia's volunteer editors to deprecate Archive.today, the Wikimedia Foundation itself might have stepped in. In its comments on the DDoS, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia said on February 10 that it had not ruled out intervening due to "the seriousness of the security concern for people who click the links that appear across many wikis."

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