404: Runner Not Found
Word games, a color challenge, Taughannock in high flow, and another mile on the track.
👋 Hello, New York Times Games team
I’m like 95% confident at least one of you subscribes. My evidence, you ask? I’ll lay it out here for the reading public to decide:
On November 21, 2025, I published a custom Wordl on Substack. Just 2 days later, that word was the ACTUAL Wordl.
On February 22, 2026, I had a whole section in my post about the # symbol. Then THIS appears in Connections on March 6.
Coincidence? You be the judge! Just saying, my suspicions will be confirmed if there’s a running-focused theme in Strands in the not-so-distant future.
What’s that color?
How good are your color-matching skills? As a designer, I really enjoyed Dialed, a bite-sized color-matching challenge.
Taughannock’s Fury
Well, not really fury. It’s fury-adjacent, with all of the recent rain and snow melt. Enjoy these sights and sounds from Taughannock Falls State Park.
Another Mile
I ran another mile race yesterday and was happy to be on par with the same distance in January and February. Just a few hundredths faster then February, so the needle didn’t budge much! That’s what I get for training mostly for half marathons. The funny thing about this race was that I mistakenly didn’t sign up in advance.
My coach texted the night before and asked if I was okay, saying she hadn’t seen me on the start list. What? I thought I signed up, but what I must have remembered was signing up to volunteer as a timer, not actually to race. No harm, because I was able to get on the start list, albeit with an out-of-order number. And 404 is a pretty awesome number, if you work in any Internet-related field. The bib ironically captions the number with “Find your lane!”
I joked with my fellow timers that the only worse bib would have been 500, which in Internet parlance means “Internal Server Error.” You definitely don’t want to have one of those while running!
Want to know how 404 got assigned? There are plenty of stories around it, but as this article explains, it may just be chalked up to “the whims of the programmer.”
1 mi in 5:29.67 // 32 of 103 overall, 5:30 pace // strava
A Tip for the Modern Worker
Keep calm in a crisis. Do you know those moments when time narrows and your blood pressure elevates? Crises can strike at any time, at work or at home. Little good comes from being the one who panics. Levelheadedness in the face of stress will help set the tone for others around you.
This tip is one of 365 in my Handbook for the Modern Worker. That followed my first book, The Art of Working Remotely, about my experience working from home since 1998. Depending on where you work and which way the wind is blowing, these may be banned books or fan fiction. I hope it’s the latter.
Mail Bag: If you work remotely and have come across an issue that needs solving, a thorn that needs removing, or just an observation you’d like to share, hit reply. I’d love to hear from you.