I know how to make a leather cap in Minecraft and I’m not going to tell you.
Because you probably either stumbled upon the crafting recipe yourself or you just looked it up on the internet. Also you probably advanced to gold hats years ago, anyway, having tossed out whatever leather gear you didn’t need for Dungeon Night fetish wear. I bet creepers are really submissive what with all that self destructive behaviour. Aaaanyway…
I happened upon the ‘recipe’ (i.e. correct 3 by 3 pattern of empty space and leather) by trial and error. When I started playing Minecraft I got engrossed by just trying things out. I knew about punching trees. And had probably seen people make crafting tables. Also the annoying putdown ‘mining like a baby’ pops into my head from time to time, so I obviously read this piece on RPS. From there on I just had a go at it. When I got stuck I horsed around some more. When I got really stuck I started needlessly enlarging my mansion. When I got really, really stuck, I quit and played Spelunky for a while to get back to real life and real priorities. You know, stuff like ‘winning’ and ‘beating the game’.
I’m not sure when it became a dogme-like rule. But it’s there now. Sort of. No internet. No wikis. No outside-of-the-game hints (I do take some guidance from the in-game achievement map though). If I’m living in a cave with no electricity it stands to reason that I’m not just hopping online to learn how to make shoes, gates, or bread. Man, I wish I had bread. Rotten monster meat is nice and all but it gets a bit samey samey after a while.