Game Play
You can tell what kind of person someone is by the games they play in the New York Times every day. And if they don’t play games in the New York Times, then they just aren’t worth you getting to know. Seriously, though, I mean it. This is way more accurate than a zodiac or enneagram or whatever star-based bullshit nonsense is floating around in the world this week. Here, let me show you.
It’s versatile, see. You can go game by game or you can do combos so you have a lot more nuance. And there’s infinite combinations. So, you start with the most obvious, see? Wordle. Your person who only plays the Wordle, that’s your basic kind of late-modern human. Has art on the walls from Target or Bed, Bath and Beyond. Probably eats kale but only steamed with a little salt, or — no wait — in smoothies. With lots of fruit so they can’t taste it. But the green is pretty. That’s your Wordle person. Clean shoes. Appropriately heavy winter coat in some shade of some absolutely forgettable color. Wears a scarf with a red stripe in it to feel stylish sometimes. Probably saw the new Avatar movie. Couldn’t tell you a thing about it that someone else hadn’t said before.
Crosswords. Here’s where it gets a little tricky, like, do they do every one every day? Just the weekday ones? Just the Sunday? And do they use those cluefinder blogs or not? You can drill down for a while, you know. But there are some things you can predict, even with all those different ways to slice. Your Crossword person — this is a reader. At least they think they are. Whether or not they’ve actually picked up a book in the last years, they can quote things at you and talk well enough for a party about almost any book that got some attention in the last six months. The Crossword person has a pretty nasty pedantic streak. Pedantic. Look it up. It’s a good crossword clue. So, like I was saying, the Crossword person will notice every typo you ever made and will call you on it, even in the text message where you meet up for coffee or something. The Crossword person will never miss the chance to text “*your” or whatever. They collect words and ideas and little bits of trivia and hoard them. They’ll ask the bartender about every ingredient in every drink. (Those come up more than you would think in the Crossword. Sometimes so often that I wonder if the rates of alcoholism among puzzle makers is the same as that among writers. If you hadn’t already guessed, I’m a Crossword.)
Now we get into the more obscure games, and here is where it gets interesting. Sudoku. Definitely a math or science person. Definitely has either been to Japan or has an anime collection. Definitely does not, I mean NOT, know how to have a conversation. You’ll know a Sudoku within minutes of meeting.
This is a story-start — if you’d like to see where the story goes “clap” for it. My “winning” start (based on number of readers who clap for it) will be developed further and might grow into a full short story!
