Question: Are you employed by a commercial hatchery? If not, have you heard of a salmon ladder?

Hatcheries construct a series of gates to help fish swim upstream to spawn. (So kind of them, though I suppose it’s deadly and self-serving assistance.)

That’s a salmon ladder. A few folks were curious about that last week…iykyk.

Apparently this is also a salmon ladder. (#justtrustme, and please forgive me the name of the subreddit where I found it.)

Second question: Would you know a Cuban heel from a stacked heel?

The New York Times’s daily Connections puzzle wants to believe we do know these things on both counts. I didn’t. I do now. I will never forget.

The routine around here:

• Crack open a couple of Mitten’s Morsels to quell the cats’ screams at the bedroom door.
• Blast Morning Edition and holler at the radio.
• Chemex the crap out of some freshly ground beans.
• Mainline the first serving of coffee.
• Demolish my morning puzzles.

Lately, I’ve tacked on “roll my eyes when I finally get the answers” to the end of that routine.

BUT HEY, MAYBE THAT’S THE POINT. 

Maybe we’re not, in this case, meant to get a neat grid of solid colored lines every single time. Or get that five-letter jerk of a word on the second guess. 

But I’m not writing this email just to kvetch about my cluttered grid. (I’m not even going to touch my frustration with Wordle’s recent tomfoolery.)

Vexing audiences is fine — perhaps even welcome — when people are there for a lil’ mental workout.

Vexing audiences is not fine when you’re trying to get your message across and, I don’t know, sell things.

If you read these emails, you know I am down to clown with fun copy 🤡

But I also strive to (and hope to god I successfully) include an unbreakable thread of clarity in everything I write.

🚫 I don’t do jargon.
🔎 I add context clues when exploring a new-to-somebody topic.
💩 I always come back to the give-a-shit factor. Well, most of the time. I’m not Wonder Woman.

You have carte blanche to go on with your bad self, pun till you’re blue in the face, metaphor yourself into oblivion. In fact, I hope you will, Paige.

But do it with intention. Do it with clarity.

As some guy I’ve given a ton of money to would say, “If you confuse, you lose.”