Taking Inventory: Ladder

Ladders obviously help you climb vertical surfaces, but here’s a bonus tip: ladders can also catch you while you’re falling. If you fall into the block space next to a ladder, then your speed will be reduced to normal “descending ladder” speed, and you’ll take no damage. Nice! Also, pressing shift while on a ladder will hold you in place, though doing so will slow down your rate of mining. Finally, ladders can be used as furnace fuel, if you accidentally make an entire stack of them and live in a bungalow.

In the real world, ladders are pretty ancient technology. In the Spider Caves (who’d want to go to a place with a name like that?), in Valencia, Spain, there’s a 10,000-year-old cave painting that depicts two people using a ladder to harvest honey from a wild beehive. That ladder is long and flexible - more like a rope ladder than a rigid one.

You probably already know that the bits you climb on a ladder are called “rungs” (which comes from the Old English word “hrung”, meaning a rod or bar). But can you name the other parts? The vertical supports that the rungs sit between are called “beams”, the curved bits that help secure ladders to surfaces are called “hooks”, and gloriously the bottom end of a ladder - the bit that touches the ground - is called the “butt”. What a wonderful world we live in!