Translating a Headline

知ってる？ わらの積み方「にお」

Can someone please help me translate this? I know the first part is asking, "Did you know?"
The second part has something to do with straws...heh.

今年1年を、漢字4文字であらわすと

This one says something about, "This year, 4 kanji characters may be revealed." I'm not too sure about this. Can you please help me translate this one too?

Thanks in advance.

The first one reminds me of the mameshiba commercials; the one that's in English is about Koalas, which prompted me to think you might've just misheard or something:

As it is, it talks about the way straw is stacked, baled perhaps? The last part doesn't make sense to me.

For the second one, it looks more like "sum up the past year in four characters." Kanji compounds that consist of four characters are call yonmojijukugo and are really commonly used in Japanese expressions. The term "arawasu" can mean "to appear" or "to express;" without kanji we have to discern its meaning from the context.

にお


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I haven't ever heard にお neither, though.

As nice gaijin-san pointed out, あらわす in that sentence is not 現す but 表す.