Journey to the Center of the Earth

What the words in this puzzle mean

ALCHEMIST

What Arne Saknussemm was — a sixteenth-century scholar of the science before chemistry.

ARNE

Arne Saknussemm, the Icelandic alchemist whose coded note starts the journey.

AXEL

The professor's nephew, who narrates the book and doubts the expedition throughout.

BEACH

The shore of the underground sea, where the travellers find fossil bones and giant mushrooms.

COMPASS

The instrument that behaves strangely below ground and misleads them about their direction.

CRATER

The volcanic mouth of Snæfellsjökull, the entrance named in Saknussemm's message.

DECIPHER

What Axel does to the runic note, cracking it almost by accident.

FIREDAMP

Flammable underground gas, one of the hazards of the descent.

GEYSER

A hot spring that erupts in a jet, met by the travellers on their way down.

GRANITE

The hard rock the deepest passages cut through.

GRAUBEN

Axel's fiancée in Hamburg, who encourages him to go.

HANS BACH

The stream Axel names after their guide, which they follow through the tunnels.

ICELAND

Where the expedition begins, and where the volcano of the entrance stands.

ITALY

Where the journey ends, when the travellers are thrown out of Stromboli.

LIGHTNING

The electrical storm that breaks over the underground sea during the raft crossing.

LINDEN BROCK

Professor Lidenbrock, the geologist who insists the descent is possible.

MAGMA

The molten rock that finally carries the raft up and out of the earth.

MANUSCRIPT

The old Icelandic book in which the coded note is found.

MARTHA

The professor's housekeeper in Hamburg.

MASTODON

An extinct elephant relative; a herd of them is glimpsed in the underground forest.

MUSHROOMS

The forest of giant fungi on the shore of the inner sea.

PETRIFIED

Turned to stone — the state of the trees and bones the travellers find.

PREHISTORIC

The world they descend into, alive with creatures long extinct on the surface.

PROFESSOR

Lidenbrock's title, and the authority Axel cannot argue his way out of.

RAFT

The vessel they build to cross the underground sea.

RUNE

The old Norse letters the message is written in.

SAKNUSSEMM

The alchemist who made the descent first and left the route behind him.

SHADOW

The peak's shadow that marks the correct crater at the end of June.

SNAEFELLSJOKULL

The Icelandic volcano whose crater is the way in.

STROMBOLI

The Sicilian volcano that erupts the travellers back onto the surface.

SUBTERRANEAN

Below the ground — the whole world the novel takes place in.

VOLCANO

Both the entrance and the exit of the journey.