Writing

The Two Best Ways To Win At Wordle, for Slate. January 2022.

"There are two optimal strategic approaches to Wordle. (If you take the third approach and just have a good time for three minutes you have our sincere congratulations)."

We Adore Cryptic Crosswords, for Popula. August 2021.

"The magic of solving a cryptic crossword is in the joy of discovery. It’s a playful, thought-provoking, confounding, and strangely amusing pastime."

How Can I Be More Productive?, for The Economist's 1843 Magazine. January 2018.

"If there’s one experience that fundamentally defines the modern working professional it’s trying, and failing, to get more done."

The extraordinary silliness of American college grading, for The Economist's 1843 Magazine. October 2017.

"Even sillier would be to rank runners by their average finish position across all races: a world-class professional could just run against high-schoolers and finish first without even trying."

The economics of gelato, for The Economist's 1843 Magazine. September 2017.

"Perhaps the gods punish us for our shallowness. We assume the beautiful stranger will be charming (he won’t), that the stylish chair will be comfortable (it isn’t), that the vibrant heaps of gelato will taste as good as they look."

Is learning to drive a waste of money?, for The Economist's 1843 Magazine."Housebound teenagers would transform into free-range adults the moment they got their licence – at least, whenever Mum let them borrow the car."

How Game Theory Improves Dating Apps, for The Economist's 1843 Magazine."A new generation of dating apps impose limitations on daters that might liberate them."

Why Won’t This Inspirational Email Chain Letter Leave Me Alone?, for Nautilus. June 2016."Seldom does anyone drop out because we all need new ideas and inspiration, proclaims the chain letter. This assertion is a blatant, implausible lie. And I can prove it."

Neuroscience of Early-Life Learning in C. elegans, for The Scientist. February 2016."We often describe phenomenology and then speculate about the underlying machinery, but research in C. elegans—and especially this particular group—have really taken it to a different level, describing behaviors in great mechanistic detail."

Why your internet connection is slow wherever you are in Africa, for Quartz. February 2016."You might assume that if your favorite websites or videos take ages to load in Nairobi or Lagos, it’s because the local internet connection isn’t very good. But increasingly, you’d be wrong."

Don't Tidy Your Room, for The Smart Set. January 2016."If I understood it correctly, A Brief History of Time said that tidying my room would (in an absurdly, ridiculously tiny way) hasten the end of the universe. Surely, I argued, a tidy room wasn’t worth that…"

The Reverse Turing Test, for Motherboard. June 2015."Being human, I've never let a little thing like pointlessness stop me."

Statistical Magicians, for Significance. February 2015."No matter how good the magician, is it really possible that everything goes perfectly for her every single time? The answer is a statistical concept called survivorship bias."

The Most Important Person At Your Company Doesn't Work for You, for Quartz. November 2014."There’s good reason to think that the employees who aren’t with you can give a better insight into your company’s shortcomings than the employees who are."

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Want to commission new writing? uri@uribram.com.

My agent is the inimitable Toby Mundy. Contact him, you'll enjoy it.