CITY GAMES PRESENTS THE SMUG REPORT

Know more. Gloat responsibly.

Saturday, October 31, 2026 | 5-minute read

Good morning. Today’s ghost is merely an optical illusion with a superior publicist, Frankenstein’s creature has a more intimidating reading list than anyone at your Halloween party, and John Candy’s birthday gives us an excuse to corner strangers about the shower-curtain-ring industry. Happy Halloween. Let’s make you slightly more insufferable to stand next to by the punch bowl.

Picture a Victorian stage: a translucent specter glides directly through solid furniture, banters with a flesh-and-blood actor, and vanishes into thin air. In 1862, audiences watched this happen without digital projection, electricity, or a single actor volunteering to pass away for the craft. The supernatural department’s most valuable employee was a well-Windexed sheet of glass.

The illusion is known as Pepper’s Ghost, named after John Henry Pepper, who debuted a grand theatrical version at London’s Royal Polytechnic Institution for Christmas in 1862 (specifically during a production of Charles Dickens's The Haunted Man). Of course, an engineer named Henry Dircks developed an earlier apparatus. Pepper figured out how to retrofit the contraption into an existing theater without bankrupting the venue. Both men appear on the 1863 patent, though history handed the marquee credit to Pepper. As every trivia buff knows, inventing a thing and branding a thing are rarely the same occupation.

Here is how you fool a room full of Victorians: place a massive pane of unadorned glass at a 45-degree angle between the audience and the stage. Down in a darkened pit, out of the audience's line of sight, stands a second actor dressed as a ghost. Blast that hidden actor with a powerful lantern, and the angled glass catches their reflection, projecting a ghostly, translucent double right onto the stage. Because the audience can see the real stage through the glass at the exact same time, their brains politely merge the two scenes into one haunting.

Turn down the lamp in the pit, and the spirit evaporates. Dim it slowly, and the phantom fades out rather than abruptly clocking out of its shift. Whenever someone calls a modern concert "hologram" futuristic, feel free to sigh audibly. Neither Tupac at Coachella nor the ballroom dancers in Disney’s Haunted Mansion are true holograms; they are just 19th-century parlor tricks coasting on a better lighting budget.

The Tie-Breaker Cheat Sheet:

On October 31, 1941, workers packed up their drills in the Black Hills of South Dakota and officially declared Mount Rushmore complete. If you have ever abandoned a home renovation two-thirds of the way through and announced that the exposed drywall is "an intentional rustic choice," you already understand the history of America’s most famous granite monument.

When carving began in 1927 under sculptor Gutzon Borglum, the original blueprint called for depicting George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln all the way down to their waists. Unfortunately, Borglum died in March 1941, leaving his son, Lincoln Borglum, to finish the job as funding constraints and the looming war helped bring the larger ambitions to an end.

After 14 years of blasting rock, they had four immaculate 60-foot heads and the faint suggestion of Washington’s lapel. On Halloween 1941, they simply stopped drilling, called it a masterpiece, and went home. Eighty-five years later, it remains a monument to the greatest project-management pivot in American history: you never fail to meet a deadline if you simply redefine what "finished" means.

The Tie-Breaker Cheat Sheet:

John Candy was born on October 31, 1950, meaning the undisputed king of big-hearted comedic chaos would have turned 76 today.

While amateurs associate Halloween with slasher flicks, true realism is the horror of being trapped in a Wichita motel room with Del Griffith in 1987's Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Opposite Steve Martin’s tightly wound Neal Page, Candy turned a boundary-blind, relentlessly chatty traveling salesman into one of cinema's great tragicomic heroes. He had the rare gift of making a character completely exhausting to share a cab with, yet impossible to write off.

Birthday Question: How does Del Griffith fund his chaotic cross-country travels? What is his specific line of merchandise?

A) Shower curtain rings
B) Kirby vacuum cleaners
C) Door-to-door encyclopedias

(Check your work at The Answer Desk below. Please refrain from passing yours off as earrings from Walter Cronkite.)

October 31 isn't just for fun-sized Snickers; since 2014, the United Nations has also designated it World Cities Day. The observance caps off "Urban October," an annual push to remind municipal governments that cramming millions of people into a concrete grid requires slightly more planning than a Spirit Halloween pop-up store.

The 2026 global observance is hosted in Fuzhou, China, focusing on urban regeneration and adequate housing. If you play trivia at a venue where the host loves a good UN question, file this directly under Sustainable Development Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities). A flashy skyline makes for a great postcard, but transit, sanitation, and housing are what keep the neighbors from revolting.

Observance Question: Which metropolis hosted the very first global World Cities Day celebration back in 2014?

A) Nairobi
B) Shanghai
C) Barcelona

Today’s Theme: Mary Shelley Would Appreciate It If You Actually Read the Book

SMUG: Pointing out that Frankenstein is the creator's surname, not the monster's. Victor Frankenstein’s creation goes entirely unnamed in the novel (though he is referred to as "Creature," "Fiend," and "Daemon"). Dropping this correction at a costume party is 100% accurate. Whether you get invited back next year is entirely on you.

SMUGGER: Informing the guy grunting in green face paint and neck bolts that the original creature was an eloquent polymath who taught himself to read using John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Plutarch’s Lives, and Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. The monster didn't stumble around groaning at fire; he had a better syllabus than most liberal arts majors.

SMUGGEST: Casually mentioning that Mary Shelley was just 18 years old when she dreamed up the entire story during the "Year Without a Summer" in 1816, publishing it anonymously in 1818 with the subtitle The Modern Prometheus. Some teenagers help pioneer science fiction on a rainy vacation in Switzerland; others spend three hours explaining why their dishes are "soaking."

Three questions. Zero supernatural assistance. Let’s see if your trivia instincts are alive or undead.

Count on It: Which Irish author gave the world the novel Dracula in 1897, while working as the business manager of London's Lyceum Theatre?

A) H.G. Wells
B) Bram Stoker
C) Oscar Wilde

Extra Feelings: How many functioning hearts does an octopus possess?

A) One
B) Two
C) Three

Golden Opportunity: Which element claims the chemical symbol Au on the periodic table?

A) Gold
B) Silver
C) Argon

(Lock in your answers. Swishing a velvet cape will not earn you partial credit.)

Birthday Bragging Rights: A) Shower curtain rings. Specifically, Del introduces himself as Director of Sales for American Light and Fixture’s Shower Curtain Ring Division. A delightfully mundane empire for a man who treats every conversation like a keynote speech.

Today’s Observance: B) Shanghai. The Chinese megacity hosted the inaugural global celebration on October 31, 2014.

Count on It: B) Bram Stoker. His 1897 epistolary novel gave the Count his literary real estate decades before Bela Lugosi supplied the accent and the evening wear.

Extra Feelings: C) Three. Two branchial hearts pump blood through the gills, while a single systemic heart circulates it to the rest of the body. Being emotionally unavailable as a cephalopod requires serious cardiovascular coordination.

Golden Opportunity: A) Gold. Au derives from the Latin aurum ("shining dawn"). Silver is Ag (argentum), and Argon is Ar. If you missed this one, please turn in your periodic table.

Your Standing:

3/3 (Smuggest): You are no longer a party guest; you are an unsolicited lecture with a drink in hand.
2/3 (Smug): Respectable. Dangerous enough to anchor Round 3 at your local bar.
0 to 1/3 (Humbled): Rough night, but at least you leave with three new facts to pretend you've known for years.

You are now fully equipped to debunk a 19th-century ghost, audit a presidential mountain, name Del Griffith’s product catalog, and ruin someone's Frankenstein costume. Your Halloween small talk now comes with footnotes.

Take that terrifying intellect over to City Games for daily puzzles and trivia. Play directly in your browser with zero downloads required.

Bring your brain. Leave the green face paint at home.

Know more. Gloat responsibly.