Ever since she vaulted into the spotlight, I have found frequent joy in watching Simone Biles’s gymnastics routines on video. Her beam sequences and tumbling passes rate as wonders of the modern world, and part of her gift is making even the most complicated moves—the ones so difficult that they’re named after her, since she’s the only one who can do them—look easy. I was ready to watch her performance at the Tokyo Games with the usual awe and admiration; instead, we watched with those same emotions as she made the tough decision to withdraw when a case of the “twisties” caused her to lose her sense of orientation in space. The stakes couldn’t have been higher, and it was impressive to see her choose to protect her physical safety and her overall well-being. In doing so, she executed yet another complicated maneuver: educating the public on the mental fortitude necessary to flip and turn in midair and then stick a landing, and emboldening other athletes to share their own experiences. Now, as Leah Faye Cooper writes, Simone is recovered and training hard in the run-up to another Olympic Games. The greatest competitor in the history of gymnastics, she truly has nothing to prove to anyone. It’s all about the joy now, and we are here for it.
Speaking of Games, if your group chats are anything like mine, at least one of them is devoted to complaining about words missing from that day’s edition of The New York Times’ Spelling Bee. (Today, I struck out on eventide.) The Times’ Games portfolio, a set of interactive brainteasers built on the foundation of the Crossword, has attracted legions of new readers—or, in Games parlance, “solvers”—to the publication, and as such has become a core part of its offering. We thought it would be fun to pull back the curtain on the approximately 100 people at Games HQ who are responsible for engineering our playtime. In reporting this story, VF’s Charlotte Klein encountered some of the best titles in the media industry (can I change my business cards to read Editorial Director of Games?), unearthed the term “hot Wordle summer” (may it always be thus), and discovered that executive editor Joe Kahn obsesses about being Queen Bee just like the rest of us. I get that eventide is arguably archaic, but still, maybe he could have a word with the Spelling Bee editor on my behalf.