CITY GAMES PRESENTS THE SMUG REPORT

Know more. Gloat responsibly.

Tuesday, October 27, 2026 | 5-minute read

Good morning. Today’s battery has considerably more patience than your phone, New York sends its mayor underground, and your Halloween skeleton comes with several anatomical corrections. Please accept this small upgrade to your conversational authority.

In 2015, the Electrochemical Society highlighted a battery-powered bell at Oxford that had been operating for 175 years. Its handwritten label says it was set up in 1840. That is an extraordinary service record for an electrical device, especially considering how many of ours respond to a slightly unfamiliar cable by becoming expensive paperweights.

Known as the Oxford Electric Bell or Clarendon Dry Pile, the apparatus has two small bells and a suspended metal ball between them. Electrical attraction draws the ball toward one bell; contact transfers charge, and the ball moves toward the other. Repeat, with exceptional commitment. Two early batteries called dry piles supply the electricity. The device’s trick is modest work performed over a very long time, not enough power to run your dishwasher until the end of civilization.

Its exact battery ingredients remain uncertain. Oxford’s account points to similar contemporary devices made from alternating layers of metal foil and treated paper, but that is an informed comparison, not an inspection of these batteries’ interiors. Their contents have not been established by opening them up. Taking apart a famously enduring experiment to discover its secret would introduce a rather awkward new variable: the person who stopped it.

Here is the distinction that makes this worth retelling. Longevity is not perpetual motion. The device uses batteries; it does not manufacture free energy or repeal physics. The mystery concerns its remarkable endurance and precise construction. It is also no grand cathedral bell: Oxford describes a tiny clapper and ringing muffled by its display enclosure. A Victorian electrical curiosity managed a century and three-quarters of exceptionally restrained productivity. Somewhere, a modern device is demanding a firmware update before it can tell the time.

On October 27, 1904, New York City opened its first subway line. Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. took the controls of the inaugural train departing City Hall.

The distinction worth keeping: this was New York’s subway opening, not the invention of underground railways. London’s underground railway had opened in 1863.

Today marks 122 years since the New York opening. The mayor’s participation also supplied an unusually literal example of a politician taking a city in a new direction.

John Cleese was born October 27, 1939. Alongside Monty Python, he helped create one of television’s most durable comedy reputations with remarkably little inventory: the original Fawlty Towers comprised just 12 episodes.

He co-wrote the series with Connie Booth. Twelve episodes were apparently sufficient to establish that the hospitality industry should not be left in Basil Fawlty’s hands.

Birthday question: What is the first name of Basil Fawlty’s wife?

A) Edith
B) Sybil
C) Hyacinth

The answer is at The Answer Desk. Please do not ask Basil for assistance.

Today is UNESCO’s World Day for Audiovisual Heritage. Its 2026 theme is “Your Window to the World.”

The concern is more substantial than finding a machine that plays your old tapes. Film and recordings can deteriorate, and playback formats can become obsolete. Preservation includes moving material into formats people can continue to access.

Among the work highlighted by UNESCO this year is an effort to preserve and digitize approximately 45,000 analogue recordings held by Radio Mogadishu in Somalia. News, music, speeches, and everyday voices all become harder to study once the evidence disappears.

Future trivia question: Which organization’s World Day for Audiovisual Heritage carried the 2026 theme “Your Window to the World”?

A) UNESCO
B) NATO
C) OPEC

History needs a backup strategy. Your drawer marked “miscellaneous cables” is only the beginning.

Today’s theme: Your Halloween skeleton has submitted factual corrections.

SMUG: The standard adult skeleton has 206 named bones. Actual counts can vary. The familiar number is a useful anatomical convention, not a requirement that every human submit an identical parts inventory.

SMUGGER: Teeth are not bones. They may match the color scheme and look convincing in a skull, but appearance does not settle the classification. Your skeleton’s smile has invited guests from another department.

SMUGGEST: Each middle ear contains three tiny bones: the malleus, incus, and stapes, commonly called the hammer, anvil, and stirrup. They transmit vibrations toward the inner ear. Even your ability to hear a spooky noise involves a miniature equipment collection.

Three questions. Your confidence has arrived early and is looking for its reserved seat.

Symbolic Gesture: Which element has the chemical symbol W?

A) Tungsten
B) Tin
C) Titanium

Moonlighting: Which is the largest moon in our solar system?

A) Titan
B) Ganymede
C) Europa

Required Reading: Who wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four?

A) Aldous Huxley
B) H. G. Wells
C) George Orwell

Commit to your answers. A strong opinion about the questions is not a substitute.

Birthday Bragging Rights: B) Sybil. Prunella Scales played Sybil Fawlty, whose tolerance for Basil supplied the hotel with an essential operating resource.

Future Trivia: A) UNESCO. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization promotes the observance and the preservation work it highlights.

Symbolic Gesture: A) Tungsten. W comes from its alternative name, wolfram. Sometimes the periodic table expects you to know an alias.

Moonlighting: B) Ganymede. Jupiter’s moon is the solar system’s largest. It is even larger than the planet Mercury, although less massive.

Required Reading: C) George Orwell. He also wrote Animal Farm. A useful author to recognize before announcing that something is “Orwellian.”

Your standing:

3/3: Smuggest. Please use your authority sparingly.
2/3: Smug. You have enough material to become interesting.
0–1/3: Newly equipped. An entirely respectable Tuesday.

You now have a Victorian battery, a mayor at the controls, and a skeleton with a more complicated résumé.

Give your knowledge somewhere to perform with daily puzzles and trivia at City Games. Play directly on the website. No download required.

Bring your brain. We trust you have kept it charged.

Know more. Gloat responsibly.