Coffee Break: A Celebration of Morning Brew and the Wordle

Welcome to another installment of an occasional series I call “Beer Break.” Rather than diving deeply into an object of my fanaticism, I kick back with a beverage and write briefly about things I love without exhaustively explaining why. These blogs also signal the start of a much-needed hiatus from writing.

You might wonder why I call this a beer break when the headline says coffee break. Well, it’s another twist for a series that began with beer and Charles Bukowski quotes (not once but twice) and then pivoted to a bourbon drink and Hunter S. Thompson passages. I’m trying to mix it up a bit to keep things interesting.

This time, my beverage of choice is a different brew—coffee. My latest blog is a celebration of much-needed morning java and the wildly popular New York Times game called Wordle.

I’ve been a fan of coffee for more than 35 years and Wordle much more recently, but the two go together nicely as a morning ritual. Before “A Fan’s Notes” takes an extended break—there is a lot of spring skiing and other trips on tap in the coming weeks—it felt like the right time to pay tribute to both.

One Sunday morning at church when I was 12, I randomly asked my Dad for a sip of his coffee. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about with this grown-up drink that my parents and other adults were always guzzling.

He handed me a white Styrofoam cup filled with industrial-strength black sludge, and I nervously brought it to my lips for a taste. It was the bitterest, nastiest, vilest concoction I could imagine. No way in hell I’d ever be a coffee drinker—or so I thought.

Sure enough, my opinion on coffee changed about six years later during my first semester at Rhodes College. One autumn evening, as I faced an all-nighter to finish a brutally difficult English paper, my suitemate and good friend Harper Cook offered to brew a fresh pot of joe to help me stay awake.

There was one rule, he said: I had to drink it black. “None of this cream and sugar bullshit,” he warned me, because sweeteners turned coffee into, well, something decidedly not coffee.

That first sip wasn’t great, but it also wasn’t terrible. Maybe my taste buds had matured? After choking down a cup, I felt a surge of energy. I downed another. And then another. And then another. Riding high on caffeine and now even liking the taste, I made it through the night, finished the paper, and turned it in on time.

From then on, I was a hardcore black coffee drinker—a distinction that holds true today. Thanks again, Harp!

A few years ago, I stumbled upon “Wordle,” the daily game from the New York Times in which you have six tries to guess a five-letter word. It’s fun, simple, and super addictive.

After pouring my morning mug of coffee, Wordle is always the first puzzle I play on my iPad. I can usually judge how well I slept the night before—and how the day ahead might transpire—by how quickly I solve it.

The dreaded “Phew”—meaning you guessed on the last try—is a bad sign, though it’s better than not solving it at all. (I hope this doesn’t jinx it, but I’m on an 86-game win streak, my longest yet.) Afterward, Sandy and I compare notes to see how many tries it took us.

I’m one of those players who always sticks with the same starter word. I use “STARE” because I like that it uses the two most common vowels and three most common consonants.

Funny enough, “STARE” happened to be the answer one day—the only time I have solved (or will solve) Wordle in one guess—but my favorite solution occurred on Feb. 25, 2024, when the answer was, you guessed it, “SMITH.” I thought it was worth sharing.

Back to today’s beverage for a minute. Usually, I’d wrap my blog here and begin my break. But while writing this entry, several movies, TV shows, and songs that feature coffee popped into my head. They’re worth mentioning because I’m a fan of each and I plan to cover several of them in “A Fan’s Notes” someday.

• First, there’s the iconic scene in “Pulp Fiction” where Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) lauds Quentin Tarantino’s character Jimmy for brewing “some serious gourmet shit.” A few minutes later, Winston Wolf (Harvey Keitel) smiles and nods his approval of Jimmy’s delicious-tasting coffee (see GIF above).
• In Jim Jarmusch’s movie “Coffee and Cigarettes,” rock icons Iggy Pop and Tom Waits honor the film’s title in a fabulous noir scene called “Somewhere in California.”
• In the cult TV show “Twin Peaks,” FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) famously praises the “damn fine cup of coffee” at the Great Northern Hotel.
• And in an appearance on “The Tonight Show,” Jerry Seinfeld (already featured in February) calls coffee the “most important part of a human’s life.” Amen, sir.
• As for songs about this glorious caffeinated beverage, Squeeze’s “Black Coffee in Bed” is an ’80s pop classic, and you can never go wrong with Memphis soul legend Otis Redding singing “Cigarettes and Coffee.” But my favorite coffee-themed tune these days is the White Stripes’ cover of Bob Dylan’s haunting “One More Cup of Coffee.” Enjoy.

On that note, I’m out. As always, thanks for reading. And I hope to see you back here later next month when I begin a new set of blogs for “A Fan’s Notes.”

In the meantime, may your Wordle answer come easily, and may you always have “one more cup of coffee for the road.”

Cheers.