Hi!

Last week, I introduced you to a fun dinnertime game my family and I played over the holidays, and then I gave you some riddles to figure out. Today, I’m back with the answers. 🙂 But before I get there, if you’re looking for a way to help the victims of the LA wildfires, the New York Times has some suggestions, here. If you’re there, I hope you’re safe! Let me know how I can help.

Onto the game. To recap, here’s how “Explain a Movie Plot Badly” is played:

The rules are simple: one person explains a movie plot badly, focusing on obscure plot points or making oblique and sometimes punny references to main themes. Using that clue, everyone else has to guess the film being described. For example, if I said “A girl loses control, puts on gloves, and it helps her keep control — but when the gloves come off, she loses control again,” that would be a description of the movie “Frozen.”

If you want the riddles without the answers, re-read last week’s email. Otherwise, keep scrolling.

(Really, you should try the riddles before you read the answers. It’s more fun that way.)

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(Last chance! Click here for last week’s email. If you keep scrolling, you’ll get the answers, and that’ll ruin it for you.)

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The Answers to Last Week’s Riddles

The answers are in parentheses after the riddle. If you don’t know why the answer is right, as a friend or two! And yes, you can ask me, too. I’m not explaining most of them because some of them may act as spoilers for the movie if they’re explained too much.

On a few of them, I’ve added some commentary, but again, I’m keeping it light.

1) A girl from Africa is elected queen, breaks her crown. (Mean Girls)

2) A recluse puts children in grave danger for philanthropic means. (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) I really like the phrase “grave danger” for this one because it pairs it nicely with #18.

3) A shattered light shatters the main character’s reality. (The Truman Show) My son came up with this one at a family birthday dinner, and no one figured it out.

4) A boy goes home from the courthouse and is surprised to find a new truck in the garage. (Back to the Future) This is my go-to when I play the game — I almost always use it first.

5) A gardener goes for a long walk, barefoot. (Lord of the Rings trilogy. It fits all three movies individually, so I’d accept any individual film, but it really fits the whole saga better.)

6) A young woman is concussed and fantasizes about becoming a serial killer. (Wizard of Oz)

7) Drinking coffee reveals that everything is a lie. (The Usual Suspects)

8) An estranged daughter is knocked up by her father’s namesake. (The Big Lebowski)

9) A man, pretending to be a cowboy, crashes a Christmas party. (Die Hard) I think this is one of the easier ones, but there’s a neat little trick. The protagonist is invited to the party so in that sense of the word, he doesn’t “crash” it, but he definitely crashes it in the literal sense of the word.

10) A man without a nose digs up a grave to fetch a stick and then goes killing people who have noses. (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II)

11) A sick child stops playing video games but still feels sick at the end of the day. (The Princess Bride)

12) A cosplayer enters the main chamber of the House of Representatives, appears to die, but runs for city council instead. (Dave)

13) A tax lawyer steals a nuclear weapon and attacks an art museum on New Year’s Eve. (Ghostbuster II) I think this is the hardest of the group. It’s not as well-known as a movie as another one, I take a slight liberty asserting that a proton pack is a “nuclear weapon” and that it was stolen.

14) A tween gives a piano concert in NYC. (Big) I made a mistake on this one — I originally had “teenager,” but Tom Hanks plays a 12-year-old. Oops.

15) A misunderstanding over tuna fish leads a lawyer to commit identity fraud. (My Cousin Vinny) If this stumps people, a fun follow-up clue is “no one from Utah was involved, despite some confusion to the contrary.”

16) A man doesn’t notice that he lost his wedding ring until he sees his wife with it, and decides to leave her. (The Sixth Sense)

17) An ex-Marine’s wife is murdered while he’s abroad, so he returns home, marries his former sweetheart, takes over the family business, and makes a killing. (The Godfather)

18) A baseball fan finds the clue he was looking for in someone else’s closet. (A Few Good Men)

The Now I Know Week In Review

Monday: How to Get a Good Grade in Ninja School: Invisible ink!

Tuesday: It’s The Andy Warhol Lottery, But You Don’t Know If You Won: I really love this idea, but not enough to invest $250 in it. Not even close.

Wednesday: Give a Little Whistle: The title is a reference to a Jiminy Cricket song from the animated version of Peter Pan.

Thursday: Like Social Media, But For Whales?: The words “fish hats, fish hats, rolly polly fish hats” was stuck in my head while writing this.

Long Reads and Other Things

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

1) “The After Dark Bandit” (Atavist, 54 minutes, December 2024). The subhead: “The police couldn’t figure out how the perpetrator ripped off two banks at the same time. Until they discovered there wasn’t just one robber but a pair of them: identical twins brothers.” Neat.

2) “The Flying Maestro: A Top Conductor Moonlights as an Air France Pilot” (New York Times/gift link, 10 minutes, January 2025). This guy can do two things I can’t. (At least!)

3) “Gratitude can improve our mental health. Here’s how to create a practice.” (Washington Post/gift link, 6 minutes, November 2024). I’m not sure how much I buy into the practical advice here, but it can’t hurt.

And in any event, thanks for reading 🙂 

Have a great weekend!

Dan