In a story titled “A List,” from the classic children’s-book series “Frog and Toad,” Toad wakes up one morning and, anticipating a busy day ahead, decides to make a to-do list. At first, the list helps him keep track of his obligations, which include “Wake up,” “Take walk with Frog,” and “Take nap.” But when the list blows away in a gust of wind, he starts to spiral. Unable to remember its contents, he figures, “I will just have to sit here and do nothing.”
For the chronic list-makers among us, Toad’s struggle is all too relatable. The impulse to organize the world by itemizing it is a time-honored tradition, whose luminaries (listed in roughly chronological order) include:
I could go on—but there’s something particularly satisfying about a finite, well-ordered list. This is the spirit, anyway, behind our new game, Catalogues.
The rules are simple: put a list of seven items into the correct order, according to a hidden theme, in five guesses or fewer. The first step is to decode the theme, which is hinted at in each day’s title. For example, the title “The ABCs of Anthropomorphism” might tell you something about the list’s subject (talking animals), and also its ordering rule (alphabetical). The second step usually involves some trivia: in order to alphabetize the list, you might need to know that “Frog’s best friend” is Toad, or that “Spider who weaves words into her web” is Charlotte.
You can see how the game works in this video tutorial, featuring the comedian Tim Meadows and his (admittedly not very helpful) colleague, Finian.
Before you play, a few tips. If you’re confused by a title, you can tap the Clue button in the top right for a bit of help. The ordering rule might be numerical, alphabetical, spatial, or something else. Lists can usually be ordered either upward or downward, though themes with an obvious directional element—north to south, A to Z—should always be ordered top to bottom.
Catalogues, which was adapted from a game by Adam Wagner, can be played every day in our Games Hub, or in the Play tab of the New Yorker app for iOS or Android. (Downloading the app gets you free access to our entire archive of games.) To avoid breaking your streak, sign up for the Puzzles & Games newsletter, which includes daily games for everyone, plus solving tips exclusively for subscribers.
Fair warning: the more Catalogues you play, the more you’ll start seeing the world as one vast landscape of lists. And as we learned from Toad, list-dependency has its perils. Still, the daily ritual of putting things in order can bring real comfort, whichever way the wind may blow. ♦
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