CITY GAMES PRESENTS THE SMUG REPORT

Know more. Gloat responsibly.

Thursday, October 29, 2026 | 5-minute read

Good morning. A wombat has made geometry unnecessarily personal, the internet begins with a crash, and Winona Ryder celebrates a birthday with excellent seasonal casting. Your Thursday is about to become considerably harder to ignore at the trivia table.

The bare-nosed wombat produces cube-shaped droppings. This is not a novelty animal fact assembled by someone selling a calendar. Researchers studied the animal’s intestinal tissue, tested its mechanical properties, and built mathematical models to investigate how a soft tube produces corners. Somewhere, an engineering student discovered a much more interesting answer to “What are you working on?”

The crucial discovery was that the shape forms inside the intestine, before the material reaches the exit. No square opening is required. In a study published in Soft Matter in 2021, researchers reported that cubes develop in the final 17 percent of the intestine. Tissue around its circumference does not have uniform mechanical properties: there are stiffer regions and more flexible ones. The contractions, combined with the drying of the material, help create the characteristic faces and corners. Nature has built a shaping process that would make a rigid square mold feel rather unimaginative.

The research combined biology with physics. By examining tissue and modeling contractions in a ring with alternating stiff and soft regions, the team showed how differences in the intestinal wall could generate increasingly square shapes. The useful idea extends beyond the bathroom detail: what comes out of a tube does not have to copy the tube’s outline. The mechanical behavior of the walls matters. A flexible structure can produce a surprisingly angular result without having an angular opening.

Wombats place droppings at prominent points, including rocks and logs, as part of their communication with one another. That does not mean scientists have finished explaining why this particular shape evolved. The researchers explicitly distinguished the mechanism of cube formation from the remaining behavioral questions. Your portable fact is therefore beautifully specific: wombat cubes are shaped internally through an unevenly flexible intestine. You may now interrupt “a square peg in a round hole” with a marsupial counterexample. Please consider whether the occasion deserves it.

On October 29, 1969, researchers attempted to send “LOGIN” from UCLA to Stanford Research Institute over ARPANET, the network that preceded today’s internet.

They transmitted L and O. Then the system crashed. The full login succeeded about an hour later.

That makes “LO” the famously abbreviated first host-to-host message. It was not a carefully chosen greeting or an early attempt at minimalist branding. It was the beginning of a command interrupted by a technical failure.

Fifty-seven years later, “it was working a minute ago” remains an important part of the digital experience.

Winona Ryder was born October 29, 1971. As Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice and Joyce Byers in Stranger Things, she has made a substantial career contribution to noticing that something is very wrong with the house.

The distinction for your next conversation: Lydia and Joyce are different characters in different fictional worlds. An impressive tolerance for alarming domestic situations connects them more reliably than any shared mythology.

Birthday question: What is Joyce’s surname in Stranger Things?

A) Wheeler
B) Byers
C) Harrington

Answer at The Answer Desk. The flickering lights are not an answer key.

October 29 is World Stroke Day, an annual observance the World Stroke Organization started in 2006. Its purpose goes beyond raising awareness: the day also draws attention to prevention, treatment, and better care and support for survivors.

That makes this year’s observance its 20th anniversary. The organization later declared stroke a public health emergency, turning a day on the calendar into part of a much larger, continuing campaign.

The 2026 campaign emphasizes recognizing stroke symptoms and the need to #ActFAST. Its message is direct: every minute counts, and getting emergency care promptly matters.

Some knowledge improves a dinner conversation. Some knowledge can help someone respond when it matters. This belongs in the second category.

Observance question: In which year did the World Stroke Organization declare stroke a public health emergency?

A) 2006
B) 2010
C) 2016

Today’s theme: The Halloween cat has several corrections.

SMUG: Cats see well in low light, but they cannot see in complete darkness. Their reputation has somehow expanded from impressive biological equipment to an ability to opt out of needing light.

SMUGGER: Cats lack a functional sweet-taste receptor. If a cat shows interest in a sweet food, other qualities, such as its fat or texture, may be attracting it. Your dessert has not necessarily earned the culinary endorsement you imagined.

SMUGGEST: Cat whiskers are not confined to the muzzle. They also occur above the eyes and on the backs of the front legs. The animal walking across your keyboard carries more sensing equipment than its face initially advertises.

Three questions. A small inspection of your alleged expertise.

Heavy Metal: Which of these metals is liquid at 20°C?

A) Mercury
B) Aluminum
C) Lead

Pearl of Wisdom: Who painted Girl with a Pearl Earring?

A) Rembrandt
B) Johannes Vermeer
C) Frans Hals

Homegrown Horror: Where is the Venus flytrap native?

A) Madagascar
B) The Amazon Basin
C) North Carolina and South Carolina

Commit to your answers. An elaborate explanation will not improve an incorrect letter.

Birthday Bragging Rights: B) Byers. Winona Ryder plays Joyce Byers. Wheeler and Harrington are other familiar Hawkins surnames.

Today’s Observance: B) 2010. The World Stroke Organization made the declaration four years after starting the annual observance in 2006.

Heavy Metal: A) Mercury. It is liquid at 20°C. The other two options remain solid under those conditions.

Pearl of Wisdom: B) Johannes Vermeer. The Dutch painter created the famous image of a young woman looking over her shoulder. A pearl and a glance have supported an extraordinary amount of discussion.

Homegrown Horror: C) North Carolina and South Carolina. The Venus flytrap’s native range is in the coastal plains of the Carolinas. The plant with the science-fiction reputation has a very specific American address.

Your standing:

3/3: Smuggest. Please do not cross-examine the other teams.
2/3: Smug. A useful person to sit beside.
0–1/3: Better equipped for the next round. That counts.

You now have a marsupial engineering lesson, an origin story for computer frustration, and a better understanding of the cat judging your decisions.

Put that knowledge into play with daily puzzles and trivia at City Games. Play directly on the website. No download required.

Bring your brain. Keep the wombat fact for the right moment.

Know more. Gloat responsibly.