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Adults compete with cocktails and kid games
By Lisa Biagiotti & Lauren Feeney
"Hijinks is the only word in the English language with three consecutive dotted letters," said Tim Harrod, who sat drinking a draft beer at Freddy’s Bar & Backroom in Park Slope.
“Fiji” also has three consecutive dots, said Rose Martin, 29. But because it is a proper noun, it’s no threat to hijinks’ status.
Such are the conversations that unfold the first Sunday of every month at Freddy's when the board games come out. Harrod, 39, a writer who was playing Trivial Pursuit as he talked about the dotted letters, has been playing board games in the back of Freddy's for the last year and a half.
Board games, spelling bees, debates and quiz nights are already standard fare during off-peak nights in New York City bars, but attendance to bar games has become more popular with the rise of online game playing. Web sites like Pogo.com and Yahoo Games, which feature online versions of classic board games and new online gaming applications like Scrabulous, have revitalized interest in playing games in real life, or at least made them cool enough to headline nights at local city bars.
According to Erik Arneson, expert and editor of board and card games at About.com, the "golden age," the "renaissance" and the "rebirth" of these games are now here.
"The Internet has reminded people that games are fun," said Arneson, who has seen an uptick in traffic to the gaming column he has written since 1999.
But while Arneson said playing a game on the Internet is "lovely," the experience is not comparable to playing in person. "You holler, you cheer, you groan," said Arneson, adding that playing in bars promotes a sense of camaraderie that is more personal than playing over the Internet.
Nerdy games have become hip. Pete's Candy Store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, sometimes has to turn away contestants for its packed bi-monthly spelling bee.
"A lot of people like to go out and socialize with some interesting framework," said Andy McDowell, owner of Pete's. "People like to do what they did when they were kids."
Susan Tansil, 26, a medical student who lives in Park Slope, took home the spelling bee championship title, a dictionary and a $25 bar tab. She came to Pete’s haunted by the time she was eliminated in the first round of her fifth grade spelling bee.
“That traumatized me 'cause I didn't think I was a good speller,” Tansil said. “Mozilla Firefox has built-in spell check now, so I thought I'd be crippled by that, so like, thanks Firefox! You didn't cripple me!"
Michael Evanchik, one of the organizers of the popular debate night at Lolita Bar on the Lower East Side said people like to be challenged, even while hanging out with friends. "We were sick of having inane conversations in bars," he said, explaining how debate night got off the ground, "so we thought, 'Wouldn't it be great to go out and actually talk about interesting things?'"
Gary Marcus, a psychology professor at New York University, said the games not only open up social situations, but represent a longing for the familiar of presumably happy childhoods and create a sense of accomplishment.
"The real world is hard, there are lots of things we are up against all the time," said Marcus, the author of the new book Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind. "Board games and video games are both designed in the same way, which is to give you a little kick, a little sense that you are making progress in every moment."
"If I play scrabble and I get a double word score, I feel it right now," Marcus said. "The brain is all about right now, and what feels good at this moment." |
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