Purple Paper - side-sheet - the field that fills everything

The Higgs - the field that gives things mass

When the universe began, nothing had mass - everything raced at the speed of light, and nothing could ever sit still or clump into a star. Then one field, switched on everywhere, started slowing some particles off the wall. How strongly a particle talks to that field is exactly how much mass it gets. The ones that ignore it stay at the wall forever. This is the bouncer at the speed-of-light wall - and the boson is just the proof the field is there.
Brout · Englert · Higgs (+ Guralnik, Hagen, Kibble), 1964 · boson confirmed at CERN 4 July 2012, ~125 GeV · one in a billion collisions · lives 1.6×10⁻²² s · the curse runs young this time

The field - drag a particle through it

Space is filled with the Higgs field (the glowing background - it's never zero, even in vacuum). Pick a particle and move it. The photon ignores the field and glides at the wall, massless. The top quark drags through it, heavily coupled - hard to start, hard to stop: that's mass. Mass isn't drag (it wouldn't coast if it were) - it's how strongly the particle couples to the ever-present field, shown here as how reluctantly it changes motion.

particle:
move your mouse / finger across the field · the particle chases the cursor · coupling to the field = how sluggishly it follows = its mass
0
coupling to field
0
resulting mass
c
can it reach the wall?
The photon doesn't couple to the Higgs field at all - so it never slows, never sits still, and is pinned to the speed-of-light wall forever. No mass, no rest. It is the wall.

The boson - make a wave to prove the field

You can't see the field directly. But hit it hard enough - concentrate enough energy in one tiny spot - and you make it ripple. One quantum of that ripple is the Higgs boson. Finding it (CERN, 2012) was how we proved the field is real: you can't see the ocean's water, but if you can make a wave, there's water. Crank the collision energy and watch for the splash.

collision energy: 2.6 TeV
two protons (near light-speed) collide · energy condenses into new mass (E=mc²) · past ~125 GeV the Higgs ripple can appear - in ~1 of a billion hits
Below the threshold: the collisions make sprays of ordinary particles, but never enough concentrated energy to ripple the Higgs field. Turn the energy up.

What it actually means

Three honest points, including the one most explanations get wrong.

Mass is not drag. The molasses picture is wrong - drag would slow a coasting particle to a stop, but mass doesn't (a massive thing coasts forever). Mass is resistance to changing motion: a particle coupled to the Higgs field can't ride the speed-of-light wall, has a rest frame, can sit still. The coupling strength sets the mass. Photon couples zero → massless → stuck at c. Top quark couples hard → heaviest known particle.
It's why there's matter at all. With no Higgs field every particle would be massless, racing at c, never able to sit still or bind. No atoms, no stars, no you. The field switching on (a fraction of a second after the Big Bang) is what let particles slow down and clump. It's the bouncer that pulls things off the wall so they can become stuff.
But it's not the source of most of your weight. The Higgs gives the fundamental particles (quarks, electrons) their rest mass - but ~99% of your mass is the binding energy of gluons and quarks racing inside your protons (E=mc² again). The Higgs sets the mass of the bricks; the bulk of you is the energy holding the bricks together. "The Higgs gives everything mass" is an overstatement - it gives the elementary particles theirs, and that's profound enough.
Confirmed against current sources: BEH mechanism proposed 1964 by three independent teams; boson observed 4 July 2012 by ATLAS (126.0±0.6 GeV) and CMS (125.3±0.6 GeV), each at ~5σ - two independent witnesses agreeing (the commitment box, in physics). Appears in ~1 in a billion collisions; lifetime ~1.6×10⁻²² s; spin 0, no charge. Nobel 2013 to Englert and Higgs (Brout had died in 2011).