Big candles cost 16 cents and burn for exactly 16 minutes. Small candles cost 7 cents and burn for exactly 7 minutes. The candles burn at possibly varying and unknown rates, so it is impossible to predictably modify the amount of time for which a candle will burn except by burning it down for a known amount of time. Candles may be arbitrarily and instantly put out and relit. Compute the cost in cents of the cheapest set of big and small candles you need to measure exactly 1 minute.

1. **Identify the problem**: We need to measure exactly 1 minute using candles that burn for specific times. Big candles burn for 16 minutes and cost 16 cents, while small candles burn for 7 minutes and cost 7 cents. We need to find the cheapest combination of these candles to measure exactly 1 minute.

2. **List multiples of the burn times**:
   - Multiples of 16: \(16, 32, 48, 64, 80, 96, \ldots\)
   - Multiples of 7: \(7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, \ldots\)

3. **Find the smallest difference of 1 minute**:
   - From the lists, we see that \(48\) (multiple of 16) and \(49\) (multiple of 7) have a difference of exactly 1 minute.

4. **Calculate the cost**:
   - The cost of 3 big candles (48 minutes) is \(3 \times 16 = 48\) cents.
   - The cost of 7 small candles (49 minutes) is \(7 \times 7 = 49\) cents.
   - Total cost: \(48 + 49 = 97\) cents.

Thus, the cheapest set of candles to measure exactly 1 minute costs 97 cents.

The final answer is \(\boxed{97}\) cents.