At the Medium Hot Mocha Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"Why has Connections in particular seemed to inspire so much online discourse? The people who work on it aren’t entirely sure..."

"but [Everdeen Mason, the Times games editorial director] had some guesses: 'There’s something about it that makes people want to make, like, relatability content about it in a way that they don’t about, like, the crossword or even Spelling Bee. It takes more effort than Wordle. There’s more of a story there.... ...Connections is more memeable. You can make more jokes with that screenshot.... I do want to say, our goal is not to make people mad.... There’s no like, ‘Muahaha, I just ruined someone’s day.... I think it’s a cognitive thing that happens sometimes that if people feel like they’re punching up or something, if they think that you are unequal to them, whether it’s up or down, they don’t treat you like a human being anymore...."

From "The NYT Connections Editor Knows What You’ve Been Saying/Wyna Liu makes the game every day. She isn’t sure why it makes people lose their minds" (Slate).

I love doing the Connections puzzle every day — it never makes me mad! — and I enjoy some of the talk about it on TikTok, especially this guy, purplejusthappens. (Purple represents the toughest of the 4 categories, but once you get 3 categories, whatever is left is the 4th category, and you don't need to understand why these things belong together to finish the puzzle. That's actually a flaw in the game. In the end, only you know if you knew why the final group was a group.)

"Of course, the [New York] Times is still competing for White House scoops with its traditional print and digital rivals and dispatching correspondents to war zones."

"But the company is also vying for people’s attention against every app on their home screen. So it’s developed products in recent years to satisfy the lifestyle needs of its audience: cooking, shopping... sports... and audio, building on the success of The Daily with a slew of podcasts. The products and the journalism coexist under what the Times calls 'the bundle'....  'A lot of people are actually buying the bundle through our Games product... And that is what is so powerful about games as a funnel.' People who engage with both news and games on any given week have the best long-term subscriber retention of any product combination in the bundle, and it isn’t lost within the Times newsroom just how integral Wordle, Connections, and the rest have become to the bottom line. As one Times staffer puts it: 'The half joke that is repeated internally is that The New York Times is now a gaming company that also happens to offer news.'"

From "Inside The New York Times’ Big Bet on Games Wordle. Connections. Spelling Bee. Ye olde crossword. The Times is home to beloved brainteasers that are helping boost the paper’s bottom line. As one staffer jokes, the 'Times is now a gaming company that also happens to offer news'" (Vanity Fair).

Lots more at the link, including detail about the producing Wordle and Connections.

"This is not the first midcentury, middle-America food craze to find new life online: Jell-O molds, 1970s-era desserts and 1970s-themed dinner parties..."

"... have all made unexpected comebacks. That’s all 'packaged-food cuisine' born of the hyper-consumerism of the 1950s.... For some, the box mixes and cans — triumphs of postwar prosperity — are a rosy portal to an imagined 'simpler time' of family dinners and easy living. 'That is nostalgia for America,' she said. 'That is our national comfort food.'"

From "Watergate Salad Makes a Comeback/The 1970s-era dish made with pistachio pudding mix, canned pineapple and mini marshmallows has caught the curious eye of the TikTok generation" (NYT).

It's absurd that something embodying nostalgia for a lost culture should bear the name "Watergate." But the nostalgia is felt by young people today, who don't mind mixing the 50s, 60s, and 70s together, not like us Boomers who think the early 60s, mid-60s, and late 60s were distinctly different eras and have long indulged in the deep, mystic belief that the first few years of the 70s were the real 60s.

And maybe there is nostalgia for the Watergate scandal. Maybe it seems poignant and delicate compared to the scandals of today... and even for Nixon. My son Chris — who is reading a biography of each American President — texted me about Nixon recently — somewhat jocosely — "Nixon is underrated. He was liberal!/Got more done for progressive causes than democrats do today." 

Anyway, the nostalgia for lost mid-century America is about far more than food. There's a sense that people lived more rewarding, warm, and loving lives back then. Here's something I saw on TikTok the other day. Let me know how it made you feel or, better yet, if you are not young, show it to someone young and ask them how it makes them feel:

The NYT game "Connections" was pretty funny today.

 

Play here.

IN THE COMMENTS: tcrosse asked, "Is it possible to get three and then miss the fourth?"

It depends on the meaning of "miss" for you. Once you have 3, the 4th must be the remaining 4 items. But until you select them and press "enter," you can still try to discern what the connection is. You know those 4 are connected, but why? If you press "enter," you'll be given the answer. The machine has no way to know whether you figured out the connection, so it will treat you the same if you did or you didn't. That's a bit of a flaw in the game or, if you prefer to see it this way, a matter of private self esteem.

"Behind the scenes, Biden has also started telling more jokes about his own age, hoping to defuse the concerns..."

"...of many voters and party leaders. 'I know I look like I’m 30, but I’ve been around doing this a long time,' he said at an event at a private home on Thursday. He has also stepped up his attacks on Trump, describing his continued shock at the thought of the former president sitting in the private dining room next to the Oval Office and doing nothing to stop the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol in his name on Jan. 6, 2021. 'He tells his supporters, and I’m quoting him, "I am your retribution,"' Biden said at another donor event in New York this week. 'What a hell of a good way to run.'"

I'm reading "Biden campaign is off and running against Trump — out of public view. Top supporters of the president are urging the party to move on from doubts over Biden’s age," by Michael Scherer.

"Move on," not from Biden, but from doubts about Biden... and not all the doubts, just that one doubt that surely cannot be the only issue, the doubt over his age. It's absurd that the substance of the campaign has been less than nothing — merely attempting to eliminate one negative.

Anyway, I was interested in the reference to the dining room — Trump "sitting in the private dining room next to the Oval Office" on January 6th. What's special about the thought of him sitting in that particular place? Is there some idea that we'd be more outraged if we pictured Trump in the dining room? It feels like a game of Clue: Mr. Orange with the lead pipe in the dining room.

The dining room detail jumped out at me because it was in last Sunday's "Meet the Press" transcript:

"As recently as 2015 Nigel Short, then vice-president of the world chess federation Fide, claimed that 'men are hardwired to be better chess players than women'..."

"... adding: 'You have to gracefully accept that.' The English grandmaster went on to explain it was clear men and women’s brains are different because he helps his wife get the car out of the garage and she has more emotional intelligence than him.... Debbie Hayton, a trans woman who writes frequently for conservative outlets, wrote in UnHerd: 'It’s possible that evolution has left men with an innate advantage in chess.' Hayton backed that up with a quote from a (female) Harvard biologist about males having a large advantage over females in spatial ability. But... [a] 2020 study in Nature Scientific Reports... found no difference between male and female spatial abilities. Any differences previously found, a lot of research suggests, may be down to testing methodologies...."

Writes Arwa Mahdawi in "Excluding trans women in women’s chess makes you a pawn of the patriarchy/The world’s top chess federation is banning trans women from competing until a review is made – and the defenses are sexist assumptions and shaky science" (The Guardian).

ADDED: In the comments, after posting about sexual dimorphism, I wrote "I'd hypothesize that chess, a game invented and developed by men, reflects male strengths and predilections. Why wouldn't it?" I took that question to ChatGPT and didn't get a straight answer, but when I demanded a straight answer,  I got one. 

The most-read national stories at The Washington Post all speak to the fear of hidden evil.

"In a recent memoir, the actor Matthew Perry, of 'Friends' reveals that his parents spent the hours before his birth playing the board game Monopoly."

"It was an unhappy marriage, Perry writes, and they divorced when he was a baby.... Most aficionados agree that Monopoly, if not a bad game, is at the very least designed to embitter its players.... But in... a new PBS documentary, we learn that... [t]he game... originally designed in 1903, by Lizzie Magie, a charismatic feminist, actor, and poet... Stephen Ives, [the] documentarian ...was once eager to introduce his children to Monopoly. 'It’s like the early Beatles or Disneyland or something....When are they going to be ready? What you don’t really realize is that you’re performing this ritualistic introduction to raw, unbridled American-style capitalism. You’re saying, "This is how society works. This is how you have fun, and crush other people."'... Games are systems, and... a shrewd designer can steer players toward a particular viewpoint through their experience of that system.... The game disguises luck as skill, misrepresents the American Dream, and promises wealth and power at the expense of others. Only in its final moments do we see the victor’s most enduring reward: isolation

Writes Simon Parkin in "How Monopoly Became America’s Cruellest Board Game/In 'Ruthless: The Secret History of Monopoly,' we learn how a game meant to critique capitalism came to embody it" (The New Yorker).

Even as the "shrewd designer can steer players toward a particular viewpoint," the shrewd documentarian will steer viewers toward a particular viewpoint.

Some pages of Bob Dylan's "Philosophy of Modern Song" are photos like this with a couple sentences isolated from the text.

I find that pretty amusing. You can buy the book here. I have the audiobook and the Kindle text, so I'm usually out walking around listening. I like Bob's voice, reading, and the various actors who read some of it are good too. I intersperse that reading with playing the songs. Here's a Spotify playlist of the songs. I have the Kindle so I can find quotes to blog, but in this case, I need the Kindle so I can see the illustrations, and then I also need the Kindle so I can contextualized those captions.

Here, in this case, it's:

She says look here mister lovey-dovey, you’re too extravagant, you’re high on drugs. I gave you money, but you gambled it away, now get lost. You say wait a minute now. Why are you being so combative? You’re way off target. Don’t be so small minded, you’re being goofy. I thought we had a love pact, why do you want to shun me and leave me marooned. What’s wrong with you anyway? I’m telling you, let’s be amiable, and if you’re not, I’m going to wrap this relationship up and terminate it. You’re asking her for money. She says money is the root of all evil, now take a hike. You try to appeal to her sensual side but she’s not having it. She’s got another man, which infuriates you no end. 

But no other man could step into your shoes, no other man can swap places with you. No other man would pinch-hit when it comes to her. How could it happen? I get it, she’s not in love with you anyway, she is in love with the almighty dollar. Now you’ve learnt your lesson, and you see it clear. Used to be you only associated with extraordinary people, now they’re all a dime a dozen, but you have to keep it in perspective. There’s always someone better than you, and there’s always someone better than him. You want to do things well. You know you can do things, but it’s hard to do them well. You don’t know what your problem is. The best things in life are free, but you prefer the worst. Maybe that’s your problem.

Now, what song is he talking about? 

"I have many kind friends with wonderful attributes, but one horrible thing they all have in common is a compulsion to come up and talk to me when they see me arrive on my bike."

"There, they find me at my worst, both physically and emotionally. I am damp from the ride and must now take off my helmet and redo my oddly compressed hair. It is possible that the breeze, once a source of my power, blew something gross — an insect, the torn corner of a Snapple label — onto my face. Using only the two hands that the Lord gave me, I must rearrange myself, smooth my rough edges, and prepare to rejoin society. All while also securing my bike to one of the city’s O-racks, or, more likely, a street-sign post with another bike already chained to it. This takes time and focus; I am essentially completing a physical equivalent of a Kumon worksheet. Inevitably, something drops to the ground. This is both embarrassing and part of my process."

From "Never Look at Someone While They’re Locking Their Bike" by Clio Chang (NY Magazine).

Things I spent time doing this morning: 

I've chosen 6 TikToks tonight — chosen them for myself. It's a crapshoot whether you'll like them. But tell me what you like.

1. Robot answers the trolley problem. 

2. A simple approach to cutting your own hair.

3. Being a Democratic or a Republican should not be a life-style brand.

4. A grown man plays the floor is lava.

5. How different farm birds eat watermelon.

6. Girls who like their own name too much.

"Nordic larpers... 'are emotional junkies.... Most of us larp because we can feel it and smell it with our bodies.' 'Nordic larps—they’re not for everybody'...."

"Some of them 'can be intense experiences, and that is probably not what we want to offer to our mainstream audience.'"

That's just an isolated snippet from "LARPing Goes to Disney World/On a 'Star Wars' spaceship, the company has taken live-action role-play to a lavish extreme. Guests spend days eating, scheming, and assembling lightsabres in character" by Neima Jahromi (The New Yorker).

LARP = live-action role play. 

We're told that in the "Nordic larp scene," they prefer "games with deep emotional involvement and few rules." Nordic designers of LARPs were inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, but they rejected the idea of using actuarial tables to determine who wins and loses a fight. That "didn’t really fit the culture here.... Nordics are way more collaborative than adversarial." 

I'm not at all familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, but it was funny to read that it's based on insurance underwriting. 

Anyway, the article is mostly about a big Disney/"Star Wars" production. I had trouble understanding this. My point of reference was a Renaissance Faire, not that I'd ever attended one, but I've seen that phenomenon discussed and mocked for decades, most recently in episode 5 of "Love on the Spectrum U.S." Isn't this LARPing like going to a Renaissance Faire?

I've been on immersive Disney World rides like "Pirates of the Caribbean," where they load you into a fake boat and pull you though various scenes, but you're still a passive member of an audience. I did that only in the context of amusing my children. I can't imagine wanting further immersion with the pressure of being part of the show. But I will put some effort into trying to understand what other people are finding rewarding. 

And does this mean I'm a standoffish observer in life, missing out on the fun? I'm standoffish about manufactured things that you're supposed to get caught up in. If there's one thing that makes me feel like a separate individual, it's being in the midst of people who are having an emotional group transformation.

"I think people kind of appreciate that there’s this thing online that’s just fun. It’s not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It’s just a game that’s fun."

Said Josh Wardle, the inventor of Wordle, quoted in "Wordle Is a Love Story/The word game has gone from dozens of players to hundreds of thousands in a few months. It was created by a software engineer in Brooklyn for his partner" (NYT).

I played for the first time and got the word on the fifth line, without being strategic in choosing the first word, just using the kind of logic you use in Mastermind. It's more interesting than Mastermind, because the answer will be a real word, not just any combination of letters/colors.

The popularity of the game — not the game itself — had something to do with the very popular NYT game Spelling Bee:

Mr. Wardle said he first created a similar prototype in 2013, but his friends were unimpressed and he scrapped the idea.... The breakthrough, he said, was limiting players to one game per day. That enforced a sense of scarcity, which he said was partially inspired by the Spelling Bee, which leaves people wanting more, he said.

"I firmly believe in not exposing people to offensive words, especially racial, gendered or sexual slurs."

"Any offensive words that appeared in ‘Typeshift’ puzzles were there in error, and when I was informed of them I updated the block list and generated new puzzles." 

Said Zack Gage, the 36-year-old developer of the word game “Typeshift," who had a licensing agreement with Merriam-Webster, quoted in "Merriam-Webster promoted a word game littered with offensive terms — the latest reckoning over language in the puzzle world/From Scrabble tournaments to the New York Times crossword, word games grapple with new standards for what is considered derogatory" (WaPo).

Typeshift is a game like the NYT "Spelling Bee," where you're given a bunch of letters and you have to find words. The games could avoid offering letters that even permit the spelling of some very offensive words or, more simply, refuse to accept certain words even though you're seeing the letters that would spell them. Just by chance, today's NYT "Spelling Bee" serves up the letters to write what is conventionally considered (by Americans) to be the dirtiest English word and it's also a misogynistic slur:

The game won't accept that word, but the letters are still foisting it upon the game-players. We have to see it in our mind! The NYT is letting that happen, even though it goes pretty far in excluding words that appear in the letters. As I've blogged about in an old post, it doesn't accept "nappy." I do think the NYT would avoid offering a set of letters that could be used to spell the "n-word," but other than that, its mechanism for preserving good feeling is to reject the word when we think of it. 

"Life, as it is often called, was conceived as a modern take on a board game designed in 1860... called the Checkered Game of Life..."

"By 1960, the Checkered Game of Life had disappeared from most American game tables. It had been replaced by such as entrants as Monopoly, which rewarded winners with riches, punished losers with penury and became one of the top-selling board games in the United States during the Depression. Mr. Klamer’s task, as assigned by the Milton Bradley Co., was to create a game to mark the company’s 100th anniversary.... With the assistance of colleagues... Mr. Klamer updated [the Checkered Game of Life] for the aspirations of contemporary players. For instance, players of the new version would choose between a 'business' route, which afforded an immediate salary, and 'college,' which promised a larger but delayed one.... To board game enthusiasts, the Game of Life was a beauty: a marvel of topography with raised roads that players traversed in their station-wagon game pieces. According to the volume 'Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them,' by Tim Walsh, Life was 'the first three-dimensional game board using plastic.'... Destinations in the 1960 version included 'Millionaire Acres' — or the 'Poor Farm.'" 

From "Reuben Klamer, toy inventor who created the Game of Life, dies at 99" (WaPo). 

I played that game when it was new in the 1960s, and I guess those 3-dimensional aspects and the built-in spinner were pretty exciting. But what a drag it made life seem! You're a peg in a car and you gather family members to fill the hole in the car and keep driving till you get to the end. At least the end wasn't called "Death." 

And it seems that this is where we Baby Boomers learned we'd better go to college. The game had determined the income difference. But you didn't even have any fun in college or learn anything deep. You just upped your earning potential, and the point of life/Life was to make the most money. What an awful game!

"With all the new money flooding the metaverse... the kinds of conflicts between neighbors we’re familiar with from the real world have followed."

"Take the monastery and the ranch house next door. Both were built by Ogar, an in-demand meta-architect in the metaverse. His real name is Alexandre Vlerick, and he lives in the real-life Lille, France.... Right after he finished the monastery for a German client, he got another request: an American client asking for a ranch house alongside it, on land where he could raise virtual chickens, horses, and a goat. Once the client moved in, he got a red barn, a tractor, and bales of hay. The owner of the monastery wasn’t pleased with the clashing aesthetics, and a familiar homeowners’-association-style conflict erupted. 'The first client was like, "Man, can’t you do it in another place? I’ll swap parcels with you so you have a bigger space far from my place,"' Ogar said. 'But he said no.'... Many early users came to the space because they were excited to hang out virtually with like-minded people who believe in blockchain technology; others were digital artists excited about new platforms.... But for newcomers paying upwards of $100,000 worth of crypto for a parcel, participation in the metaverse might be less about the liberatory potential of blockchain and more about speculating with crypto on digital assets. There is a clear tension between the idea that the metaverse is a utopian blank canvas, socially and visually, and the fact these spaces are based on money-backed property rights.... [T]here is already a kind of nostalgia setting in among longtime users of these platforms... 'The big money is moving in....'"

From "Does the Metaverse Need a Zoning Board? As new crypto investments flood online worlds, conflicts between virtual neighbors are on the rise" (NY Magazine). 

It's a replication of the problem of gentrification. First come the young creatives. They make the place cool and alive. Then come the people who just buy their way in. But what are they buying? They don't really live there... or do they spend time there in some way. Is it art or is it investment? 

In any case, Ogar has a nice job for himself. Speaking of jobs, there must be lawyers. There must be government. Or maybe not. It's a game, isn't it? I don't understand it, but I got to thinking about the board game Risk. 

There's never a point in Risk where government emerges. You just play to the death, every time. Sometimes you feel real emotio 

FROM THE EMAIL: Steve writes:

"I wish I could make it so that people were more thoughtful and kind toward each other. It’s something that I think about a lot as I move through life."

"In Japan, for example, we have priority seating on train carriages, for people who are elderly or people with a disability. If the train is relatively empty, sometimes you’ll see young people sit in these seats. If I were to say something, they’d probably tell me: 'But the train is empty, what’s the issue?' But if I were a person with a disability and I saw people sitting there, I might not want to ask them to move. I wouldn’t want to be annoying. I wish we were all a little more compassionate in these small ways. If there was a way to design the world that discouraged selfishness, that would be a change I would make." 

 From "Shigeru Miyamoto Wants to Create a Kinder World/The legendary designer on rejecting violence in games, trying to be a good boss, and building Nintendo’s Disneyland" (The New Yorker)("In 1977, Shigeru Miyamoto joined Nintendo, a company then known for selling toys, playing cards, and trivial novelties. Miyamoto was twenty-four, fresh out of art school. His employer, inspired by the success of a California company named Atari, was hoping to expand into video games. Miyamoto began tinkering with a story about a carpenter, a damsel in distress, and a giant ape...").

Is "nappy" a racial slur?

It's censored in the New York Times "Spelling Bee" game today:

The "Help" page only says: "Our word list does not include words that are obscure, hyphenated, or proper nouns. No cussing either, sorry." So "nappy" must be a "cuss." I've noticed in the past that "coon" is off the word list, even though the word "coon" can mean "raccoon" (or, though there's not much occasion to say this anymore, a member of the Whig party). "Nappy" can also mean "diaper." And it can describe the surface of some velvety fabrics. 

It seems that Spelling Bee eliminates a word when one meaning is an insult — a particular sort of insult, aimed at members of a group that has, historically, experienced subordination. 

But is "nappy" an insult? It almost seems insulting to think of "nappy" as an insult.

I found this article from last year (at NPR) — "The Racial Roots Behind The Term 'Nappy.'"  

"I know that I am dealing with some form of low-grade depression. Not just because of the quarantine, but because of the racial strife..."

"... and just seeing this administration, watching the hypocrisy of it, day in and day out, is dispiriting.... I have to say, that waking up to the news, waking up to how this administration has or has not responded, waking up to, yet another, story of a Black man or a Black person somehow being dehumanised, or hurt or killed, or, falsely accused of something, it is exhausting. And, and it, it has led to a weight, that I haven’t felt in my life, in, in a while.... Barack’s in his office, making calls, working on his book. I’m in my room, the girls are on their computers. But right around five o’clock, everybody comes out of their nooks, and, we like, do an activity, like, puzzles have become big, just just sitting and doing these thousand piece puzzles.... So Barack has taught the girls [the card game] spades, so now there’s this vicious competition.... It’s almost like they needed the world to stop a little bit. You know they didn’t realise that they were, that the world they were on, and the way they were living it, was so treadmill-like. So fast and furious. Um, because it was all they ever knew.... [The pandemic is an opportunity to] decide how you want to show up in the new world. Because it will be a new world."

Said Michelle Obama, in her podcast, quoted at The Guardian.

I wonder if Michelle Obama suffers from the medical condition, depression. I hear "some form of low-grade depression" to mean that she feels low or sad based on the current conditions, not that she has clinical depression. But perhaps she does, and I would hope that people who suffer from depression feel supported by her words.

As for the Obamas, under lockdown, doing puzzles at the end of the day — I imagine that millions of people, reading about that, feel uplift just to picture the beloved family around a table in the evening  laughing and talking over a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. I am not kidding when I say that typing out that sentence brought tears to my eyes. What is more wholesome than a married couple with their adult children working on a complicated puzzle together? Such a beautiful life, and yet they still think of the troubles of the world and carry that weight along with them.

What puzzles do you imagine them doing? Maybe Van Gogh's "Starry Night" or Edward Gorey's "Cat Fancy" or this William Morris tapestry. That's what the Obamas in my evening fantasy are doing, and if someone made a puzzle out of an intricately detailed painting of the Obamas doing a puzzle, I would do that puzzle and so would millions of Americans. It might cure low-grade depression.

And here are the rules for the card game spades. Key rule: "The spade suit is always trump."

ADDED: "There's a tramp sittin' on my doorstep/Tryin' to waste his time/With his methylated sandwich/He's a walking clothesline/And here comes the bishop's daughter/On the other side/She looks a trifle jealous/She's been an outcast all her life/Me, I'm waiting so patiently/Lying on the floor/I'm just trying to do my jig-saw puzzle/Before it rains anymore...."