Happy Friday! If you're new to Now I Know, you'll notice that today's format differs from the rest of the week. On Fridays, I pause to write the "Weekender," my  "week in review" type of thing, or to share something else I think you may find interesting. Thanks for reading! — Dan

Let's Play My New Favorite Daily Minigame

Hi!

Over the years, I’ve used my Friday newsletters to share fun diversions that I’ve come to enjoy. Here’s another one: Minute Cryptic.

If you’re not familiar with “cryptic crosswords,” don’t worry — I really wasn’t either before I dove into Minute Cryptic. They’re crossword puzzles but the clues aren’t straightforward; rather, the clues are designed to imply an answer that doesn’t work, and you have to use some wordplay to figure out the right answer. There’s a number after each clue in parenthesis outlining how many letters the correct answer is, and if it comprises multiple words, you’ll get the number of letters in each word, e.g. (2, 3).

It’s easier to explain by example, which is partially why Minute Cryptic is so accessible. Instead of giving you a whole cryptic crossword, they just give you one clue each day. Let’s solve the one from Tuesday, January 28 together, and you’ll see what I mean.

“Cinema illegally hides message on a screen?” with a five-letter answer. If this were a traditional crossword clue, this would suggest something like “subliminal messaging” or the like, but that’s going to take a lot more than five letters. But it isn’t a traditional crossword clue.

Cryptic clues always follow the same pattern. Part of the clue is the definition of the word you’re looking to solve for, and the part of the clue always comes at the beginning or end of the clue. The rest is some sort of wordplay. The question mark at the end indicates that part of this clue is pretty loosey-goosey, so this isn’t the best example to use, but you’ll see why I chose it soon. 🙂 Let’s try to decipher this one.

You’ll find that if you find the right path, you reach the end quickly; but if you’re on the wrong path, it’s going to be a headache. In this one, I got on the right path quickly. Why? Because of the word “Hides.”

“Hides” and words like it (“contains,” “hidden,” etc.) are very common wordplay indicators — they suggest that the answer you’re looking for is hidden somewhere else in the clue, and typically in the words preceding the indicator. In this case, the preceding words are “cinema illegally,” and that’s a funky turn of phrase to begin with, which suggests that it was purposely chosen for wordplay purposes. And that’s exactly what’s happening here. If you ignore the space between the two words, you get “cinemaillegally” and if you focus on the center-ish of that gobbledegook, you’ll see the word, “email,” hidden inside it. And “email” — as evidenced by what you’re reading right now — is a “message on a screen.” (See why I chose this clue?) Bingo.

But what I like a lot about Minute Crpytic is how it helps you find the answers, even when you get stuck, like I typically do. If you hit the “show hint” button, it will tell you what the definitional part of the clue is. And then you can hit “show letter” to reveal a letter one by one, if you need those. And finally, when you’re done — even if you’ve gotten the clue right and don’t know why — you can get an explanation of the reasoning: they put an explanation of each answer on their YouTube channel. (Here’s the one for the “email” clue.) Each video is well-produced and well-explained, and lasts about a minute, as promised.

Give it a try and let me know what you think! And if you love it and want some actual, full cryptic crossword puzzles, the New Yorker used to publish them and their archive, here, is available for free.

The Now I Know Week In Review

Monday: The Travel Hack That Can Get You Kicked off a Plane: I can’t recommend you try this because it can get you in trouble.

Tuesday: A Very Rich Woman Doesn't Want You To See This Painting: But yes, there’s a picture of it behind that link. (Of course!)

Wednesday: The Place Where You’re Not Allowed to Die: Not that they can actually prevent that from happening, though. Otherwise, a lot of people would go there! Almost everyone, really.

Thursday: When Cardboard Art Goes Sledding: A fun winter activity in Minnesota, but it’s kind of dangerous.

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And thanks! — Dan

Long Reads and Other Things

Here are a few things you may want to check out over the weekend:

1) “I Was Addicted to My Smartphone, So I Switched to a Flip Phone for a Month” (NY Times/gift link, 16 minutes, January 2025). I won’t be doing this, but it’s probably not a terrible idea.

2) “What Happens In Prison When You Can’t Pee On Command” (Defector, 28 minutes, January 2025). When I was a junior in high school, a federal (I think) prison located about 30 minutes away was set to open a few months later. My class was able to tour it before any inmates arrived, so I got to see the ins and outs of the facility in a way few people do. The whole class had the same impression at first: this isn’t so bad. There’s a gym, cafeteria, yard, etc. — not all that different than the school, except no classrooms. Even the cells weren’t so bad; they were two- to four-person mini-apartments, basically, with no kitchen of course, but nothing too scary. (The scary part, of course, is the other inmates, but they weren’t there. Oh, and the fact that you can’t leave.) Even the shower room had private-ish shower stalls, unlike what you see on a lot of TV shows.

But the one thing that, universally, caused concern among me and my classmates was the toilets. Each cell had a toilet in the middle of it with no curtain or door for privacy. And to make matters worse, the tour guide (warden? I don’t remember) told us that from lights on to lights out, the cell doors were programmed to remain open. If you had to use the toilet, you did so in full view of the rest of the cell block. And the smell also had nowhere to go. That was the difference-maker for my class: Across the board, none of us could stomach the idea of going to prison.

This story isn’t about that. But I’ve carried that story with me for so long, this felt like a good opportunity to share!

3) “How the biggest rock band in the world disappeared” (Washington Post/gift link, 6 minutes, January 2025). It’s the end of R.E.M.’s careers as they know it, but they feel fine.

Have a great weekend!

Dan