Over crosswords, Rubik’s Cubes or Scrabble, these couples bonded through their shared love of puzzles and games.
Dating is making a comeback as the world opens up again. Apps still dominate the dating world, and the meet cute is less common than it used to be.
Surrounded by the daily madness of the world today, some couples have relied on games as a source of friendly competition, connection and romance. “This might sound obvious, but an important ingredient to a healthy relationship is ritual,” said Ross Trudeau, a longtime crossword enthusiast who constructs the puzzles with his fiancée, Jessie Bullock. “And the daily nature of the crossword provides us with a regular opportunity to come together in the spirit of play, put our heads together (literally) and be mindful of some of the things we love best about one another,” he said in an email.
Jessie and Ross are one of six couples we talked to about how a love of games, fun and competition can lead to long-term relationships and marriage. The couples say that a shared love of games is irreplaceable, eternally holding court in the world of romance.
Ambie and Toby
Ambie Valdés and Toby Mao, both 33, met through “speedcubing” — a sport that involves solving a Rubik’s Cube as quickly as possible. They both attended the U.S. Nationals in 2006 — where Toby broke the world record — but they officially met at the U.S. Open cubing competition in 2007.
“The Rubik’s Cube was the reason we met and talked to each other, but we started talking more outside of cubing pretty quickly,” Ambie said.
She had been a Rubik’s Cube fan and player for most of her life. When Ambie was a child, she would scramble a Rubik’s Cube and hide it for her father to find and solve. She figured out how to solve the first layer of the cube by herself, but in 2002, when she found out that one of her high school friends knew how to unscramble the entire cube, she was inspired to ask her father to teach her how. With his method, Ambie was able to solve the Rubik’s Cube in around one minute.
Toby, on the other hand, learned how to solve a Rubik’s Cube at summer camp in 2003. “My residential assistant had one, so I asked him to teach me how to do it, and I got really into it,” Toby recalled. He took it home to show his brother, and they started cubing together. “We kept trying to get faster and faster times, and it was addictive,” Toby said. It has played a big role in his life ever since. “It helped me get into college, and I met Ambie through it,” he said.
Ambie said she enjoyed hanging out with Toby at the Chicago speedcubing competition, but they were friends for a while before they hit it off romantically. The pair didn’t see each other often since they went to different colleges separated by several states: Ambie to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and Toby to Northwestern University near Chicago.
The friendship started out as long-distance, and they would visit each other on the weekends, she said. To keep in touch in between visits, they would chat on AIM and play games with each other online. “As I got to know him more, I slowly started liking him as more than a friend,” Ambie recalled, adding that she’s always loved and admired Toby’s dedication to his hobbies.
When they first started dating, Toby told Ambie that he was learning Morse code, a new hobby. Because she liked him, she decided to learn, too — a pattern that would appear throughout their relationship. The couple still find hobbies to get into together. Right now, they’re delving back into Dance Dance Revolution, the interactive dancing video game.
They’ve both been “retired” from cubing for about 10 years now, Ambie said, although they sometimes solve Rubik’s Cubes for fun. Now they live in San Mateo, Calif., with their 2-year-old twin sons, Kevin and Roy.
Greg and Jake
Greg Watson and Jake Bidner, both 30, met in a statistics class in 2012 during the spring of their sophomore year of college at Indiana University. Jake, who usually sat in the front of the class, helped Greg, who usually sat in the back, with his homework, and sparks started flying from there. “I genuinely don’t know if I would have passed that class if I hadn’t met Jake and had him to help with assignments,” Greg said.
When Jake and Greg first started dating, Jake “wasn’t out yet,” Greg said, adding that they were both young and awkward and didn’t want to move too quickly. Greg traveled to Columbus, Ohio, to spend time with his family for Easter just a few weeks after they started dating, and he anticipated fielding love-life questions. The relationship wasn’t official yet, so Greg texted Jake on his way to Columbus and asked, “If they ask about you, what should I call you?” Jake responded, “I guess you should say I’m your boyfriend.” Greg said it’s “cheesy as hell,” but that text still makes him smile every time he thinks about it.
Games played a big role in Greg and Jake’s courtship. Growing up in the Midwest, Greg and his family were heavily into playing board games and card games together, with a particular affinity for Euchre, a card game similar to bridge. “I remember being so nervous for Jake to come to his first family function with me,” Greg said. But he knew Jake was the man for him when he “survived” being partnered with his father for a game.
Greg proposed to Jake when the couple visited Amsterdam in 2016.
The couple married in 2017, and in July 2020, they moved to Washington, D.C., so Jake could pursue his M.B.A. at George Washington University.
That winter, they spent the holidays with Greg’s game-loving parents, which inspired them to make a game of their own. Greg and Jake spent the entire eight-hour drive from North Carolina to Washington, D.C., brainstorming game ideas. “I am a wildly impulsive person, and we knew that,” Greg said of the creation process. “If we didn’t start the process then and there, it wouldn’t happen.”
They came up with Poof the Game and released it to the public nearly a year later, in October 2021.
The goal of Poof the Game is to get rid of all your cards before your opponents do. Neither Greg nor Jake were experts in design or manufacturing, so they relied on specialists.
Games help the couple “connect with each other and do something different,” Jake said, adding that they allow both of them to tap into their competitive sides.
Greg and Jake agreed that creating and building a game from scratch strengthened their relationship and helped them bond. “Sometimes it can feel like us against the world,” Jake said. “I think both of our commitment to making it work has brought us closer together.”
Jessie and Ross
Jessie Bullock, 33, and Ross Trudeau, 38, met on a dating app while Jessie was finishing a year in Rio de Janeiro, where she did Ph.D. field work. “I was feeling a bit melancholy to be leaving Brazil,” she said in an email, “but having a promising date on the calendar helped.” Jessie and Ross had their first date two days after she returned to the United States.
The couple had been dating only a few months when the pandemic presented them with the “stark decision of whether or not to quarantine together,” Ross said. “Like it did for many couples, 2020 became something of a relationship crucible,” he said in an email. “We took a leap and built a partnership on two-person living room rave parties, fancy-dress takeout date nights and a growing sense of having gotten very, very lucky.”
Ross, a longtime fan and constructor of crossword puzzles, introduced Jessie to the “crossworld,” she said. Ross said, “It wasn’t a huge shock when Jessie, a gifted scientist and linguist, picked up grid building seemingly overnight.”
“Ross is an amazing communicator,” Jessie said. “One of the first things I remember loving about him is how he creates space for bonding.”
When Jessie and Ross were getting to know each other, Jessie downloaded the puzzle software Ross used and made him an “objectively terrible Valentine’s Day puzzle,” she said. The puzzle is “of course, his favorite puzzle ever,” she added.
Now they make crossword puzzles together: The duo has published three in The New York Times. “It was so gratifying to come up with the theme answers together and divide labor as we put the puzzle together,” Jessie said, reflecting on their first joint constructing experience. She said crossword puzzles are “yet another tool we have to communicate openly and honestly with each other.”
Ross and Jessie were engaged in August 2021, and they will be married in July 2022. They live in Cambridge, Mass., with their cat, Ruby.
Raj and Bradley
Raj Kalra, 38, and Bradley Walters, 35, met in the parking lot at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., in 2009 while they were waiting in line to audition for “American Idol.” Neither of them made it past the first round, but “I like to think we got golden tickets to a different kind of Hollywood,” Raj said. Their “Hollywood” was their relationship, and eventually, marriage. “Brad was and is the first person to ever really see me,” Raj said. “He inspired me to come out to my parents and the world.”
Bradley said one of the first things that drew them to each other was their openness about wanting to build a family. “In a gay relationship in 2009, it certainly couldn’t be assumed that someone you were dating wanted to have kids,” Bradley said.
Their love of games has been a common thread throughout their relationship. “It all really started with Scrabble and grew from there,” Raj said. “I like to think of it as a gateway drug of sorts,” Bradley said. “I always had plans to pull Raj into more serious and challenging games, but I started with a friendly, accessible word game.”
The couple now have a collection of Scrabble-themed paraphernalia in their home, including Scrabble tile pillows with their initials and Scrabble coasters. Raj even proposed to Bradley while they were playing Scrabble in June 2012 on their balcony in Toluca Lake, Calif., where they lived at the time.
Raj said that his ultimate dream was to be a father, and that before he met Bradley, he had started to give up on that dream. Raj recalled the feeling he had when Bradley first moved in. He “insisted on putting pictures up on the bare walls” and “filling the fridge with food other than protein shakes and oatmeal,” Raj said. “He turned my house into a home.”
The couple married in 2014, and they live in Songdo, South Korea, with their two children, Leo, 7, and Wesley, 2.
May and Kevin
May Huang and Kevin Trickey, both 24, lived in the same dorm at the University of Chicago in 2016, where they were both part of the school’s swing dancing club.
“I guess you could think of swing dancing as a game, in the sense that dancing is a sport,” May said. “It’s got the social element, a little bit of competition and a bunch of different moves,” she added. “Because we are each other’s main dance partner, though, there are now a bunch of moves that I feel like are special to us, and that only we lead and follow with each other.”
May and Kevin were friends for almost an entire school year before they realized they liked each other, but they were “assisted by some close friends’ nudging,” May said. They went on a spontaneous didn’t-realize-this-was-a-date to Lake Michigan after a swing dance performance. That night, as they looked out over the lake, there were fireworks. It was “super romantic,” May said.
May and Kevin would both prefer to have a game night over going out for drinks, she said, adding that they’re both “stubborn and competitive.”
During the pandemic, May downloaded the New York Times crossword app and made the daily Mini Crossword part of her routine. After a month of making what she called “May’s Minis,” she decided to try making full-sized crosswords of her own and created 15x15 grids, the standard size for The Times’s crossword puzzles. She and Kevin were both working from home and shared a desk, so he saw her working hard at creating the crossword puzzles. “I bet I could write you a program that could make a grid faster than you can,” Kevin told May. She accepted his challenge, and by the end of that month, Kevin had created a program that could churn out a full 15x15 grid.
In June 2020, after three years together, they were married at a courthouse. The following month, their project Crossworthy.net — a free, independent crossword site that features puzzles by May or the couple — was born. In January 2021, May and Kevin introduced Crossworthy Construct, the puzzle construction side of their platform.
They now live in Berkeley, Calif., where Kevin works for a food technology company and May works for a public relations firm. Because they married during the height of the pandemic, May and Kevin are hosting an in-person wedding celebration in June.
Caitlin and Kate
Caitlin MacAlpine, 40, and Kate Zinsser, 39, met in 2006 when they were playing rugby for the Northern Virginia Women’s Rugby Club.
Caitlin remembers being “super nervous” for her first date with Kate. “I got my first and only speeding ticket on my way,” she recalled.
Their second date was smoother and less nerve-racking. Caitlin bought food, and Kate cooked for her. “It’s still basically how we operate,” Caitlin said.
Caitlin and Kate balance each other with their personalities and interests: Caitlin says she is more anxious and less prone to trying new things, and Kate pushes her out of her comfort zone. “I would never do as much camping as I do now if it were not for her,” Caitlin said.
The couple found a kinship in complicated jigsaw puzzles when they first started living together, Caitlin said. During the “Snowpocalypse” in Washington, D.C., in 2009, they spent days without power, “hunched over jigsaw puzzles with headlamps on,” Caitlin said.
Kate proposed to Caitlin soon after that, in May 2010. Kate wrote the letters from the phrase “Will you marry me?” on rocks, then asked her girlfriend to unscramble the letters. By the time Caitlin mentally turned the letters into words, they were engaged.
“I don’t think I lingered very long over assembling the words before I said yes,” Caitlin said. “She didn’t even try to arrange them,” Kate recalled. “She had already solved the letter jumble in her head and just looked at me and said, ‘Yes!’” They used the rocks in their garden walkway.
Jigsaw puzzles became a family tradition for the couple, and they always get a new one for Christmas. “The whole extended family chips away at it, piece by piece, in the week we’re together,” Kate said. They stay up late into the night “with wine and all the floor lamps dragged over,” she added.
Kate and Caitlin live in Oak Park, Ill., with their 3-year-old daughter, Ashleigh, and their 6-year-old son, Graeson.
Submit your Wordle dating stories.
We’re looking for stories about how Wordle has affected your dating life. How has it changed your connection with someone, for better or for worse?
Join us here to solve Crosswords, The Mini and other games by The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/crosswords/all-in-the-game-of-love.html
2022-03-24 13:00:15Z
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "All in the Game of Love - The New York Times"
Post a Comment