In Memory of Name Drop
Every morning for the last eight months, I would wake up to a new text. I’d scramble out from under my covers, fumble to put my glasses on and open my messages. I would start each morning reading a text, not from a significant other or a parent, but from one of my friends bragging about their score on that day’s edition of the New Yorker’s Name Drop game.
The concept of Name Drop was simple: guess the identity of a famous person with as few clues as you can. The game provides you with six clues, one at a time, progressing from obscure to obvious facts. Guessing the celebrity on the first clue earned you the ultimate bragging rights. I excelled in clues about actors and musicians. Toby, one of the friends I played with, had a remarkable track record in naming politicians and historical figures. The third member of our trivia trio, Aaron, would cite facts from his French classes while naming writers. After playing Name Drop, we’d screenshot our score and send it off to our Name Drop group chat.
Playing the New Yorker’s Name Drop game became a daily ritual. Toby, Aaron and I had full conversations in only Name Drop results. Occasionally someone would chime in with commentary, “I literally was just having a conversation about that guy yesterday.” “I watched the movie but totally forgot the name of the actor.” “Sorry, I don’t live in Maryland and know y’all’s state history.”
The chat ran through the entirety of the spring semester, and when the three of us headed our separate ways for the summer, the chat lived on. Toby would send his answers in earliest from Washington D.C. I’d chime in a few hours later from St. Louis. Aaron found free time from his job as a summer camp counselor in Maine to participate in the day’s puzzle. Although bragging was certainly a part of the Name Drop group chat, the chat quickly became more than a way to brag about our knowledge of random famous people. The goal of the game was to search your brain for knowledge of famous people, but the game taught me more about the people I played with instead.
I learned what made Aaron and Toby tick: what media they consumed and what history they read up on. The game gave me an excuse to text my friends daily. A screenshot of my score could jumpstart a conversation. Sometimes, this conversation morphed into “By the way, I have a break from class. Want to meet for lunch?” or “How is life going?” Whether the three of us were hanging out later that day or wouldn’t see each other for months, the chat connected me to these two important people in my life.
Toby, Aaron and I returned to our university in the fall with the Name Drop group chat full of momentum. Until one Monday when I opened the New Yorker app and found last week’s Name Drop puzzle on the front page. I frantically refreshed the page as I looked for today’s puzzle. “Is there a new Name Drop today? Mine isn’t loading,” I texted the group chat. No one else had found a new puzzle either. I rationalized that a glitch overcame the New Yorker; I would find a new puzzle tomorrow. Except, the next day, I found nothing new. Fear settled in as I found no new puzzle the following day. “Is Name Drop over,” Toby texted a few mornings later. “I’m getting worried,” I responded. “Tragic,” added Aaron. Name Drop died on September 8, 2023, and I have been mourning the loss ever since.
I set out to write an obituary for Name Drop. To memorialize the puzzle which felt like micro-dosing bar trivia; a puzzle with a clever, simple concept that relied on knowledge rather than simply luck; a puzzle where the goal challenged you not only to get the answer correct but to get to the answer quicker; a puzzle that combined the nerdiness of a crossword with a reward for quick intuition. However, in memorializing Name Drop, I found my favorite part of it: the human connection. Quite frankly, I likely would not have played Name Drop for eight months straight if it had not been for Aaron and Toby. I thought I had fallen in love with a puzzle, but I had fallen more in love with my friends.
A few weeks ago, while I bemoaned the loss of my beloved group chat, a text popped up on my phone. Toby had changed the name of our chat from Name Drop to Connections, texted us his New York Times’s Connections score, and told us “This is a Connections group chat now.” I have played Connections daily for the last month now and I have a feeling that as long as Toby and Aaron keep texting me their scores, it will become my new favorite online puzzle. ♦