Gaming

During lunch breaks (or any breaks for that matter), it’s usually not enough to discuss nerd stuff with my colleagues. Oh no, we have to take it up a notch, so naturally we play puzzle games while on our break. One of our all-time favorites is the daily New York Times (NYT) Spelling Bee https://www.nytimes.com/puzzles/spelling-bee https://www.nytimes.com/puzzles/spelling-bee . It’s a game with simple rules: Every day, you get presented with an assortment of 7 distinct letters, arranged in a honeycomb-like pattern (one letter in the middle, and 6 surrounding it). The goal of the game is to come up with as many words using the 7 letters, with some additional limitations: ...

For a long time, one of my favorite hobbies was gaming, and one of my favorite games was DotA 2. According to Steam, I’ve spent thousands of hours playing it - and whether alone or with friends, I always had a blast! The premise of the game is deceptively simple: Two teams of 5 players, each controlling a hero, need to defend their base (so-called Ancient), while at the same time trying to destroy the enemy base. That’s the basic idea - you now understand the game. But, given over a hundred heroes, items, play-styles, etc., DotA is actually extremely complex, and virtually no two games are the same. It’s easy to understand, but hard to master - kinda like chess. ...