Serving Up Coffee and Joy In Black Rock City

No Stone Unturned
Our last pre-Burn Word Play Cafe team meeting could have gone two ways. It could have lasted late into the night with a litany of small loose ends or we could agree that we had nothing left but a rallying cry of “See you in the dust” and the promise of an early bedtime. Our call lasted only half an hour. Despite having done all our work completely remotely (we only met in person two times), we felt pumped and prepared. Then, we got to Burning Man.

This year took hot and dusty to a new level. Many Burners, even the most crusty and jaded, say it was the hardest ever. But Word Play Cafe was a resounding success! As a new project we relied on our individual experiences as Burners, Makers, Creatives, Planners and Producers to create something complex and tangible out of a wisp of ideas back in January.

Our commitment to meeting weekly meant that we had consensus on what the plan and scope was for this year’s Burn and thus the opportunity to think of even the tiniest of details for every component of WPC. For example, we brought small laminated cards and grease pencils so the “secret word” for our analog Wordle would be easier for the proctor to see without the guesser accidentally getting a peek while also not creating any MOOP in the process.

Another example of this attention to detail was keeping all the components for each game in individual plastic casings. This both kept us organized and provided essential protection from the many severe storms that came through. Again and again, we saw how the work we had put into the planning led to transformative experiences for our team and our visitors.

Perhaps most importantly, we learned that our carefully worded listings in the What Where When and our social media efforts in advance of the Burn were very effective in getting folks to visit us. This was heartening as we had picked over each word, comma and period in every sentence that we wrote.

Building a Place to Feel Heard
Since we first began our process of sketching out the Word Play Cafe, we kept coming back to the idea that there was a dichotomy for some Burners between enjoying the parts of Black Rock City that are intentionally different than in the Default and missing the daily camaraderie, satisfaction and structure that games like crosswords and Wordle offer. It turned out that this inspiration was the core of our success!

Though we did believe that there was a desire for a space like ours, we also shared some concerns that our baby would be a belly flop. But those worries proved to be totally unfounded. “A whole lot of people expressed so much joy just to have discovered a place that seemed made just for them in Black Rock City”, Seneca shared. “We’d worried whether anyone else would actually be excited about crosswords and other word games at Burning Man. But, it turned out a whole lot of people were thrilled to find ‘their people, their place.’ It was so rewarding!” One of our visitors even said to Hilary “I found my lobster!”

Over the course of the week we had nearly 500 visitors. Some stopped by for coffee provided by Shots Fired and stayed to play games, some folks came back to see us all week to get the daily crossword and hang out. A few folks liked us so much that they became volunteers on the spot, becoming de facto members of our team. (We see you Faceplant!)

Over and over we heard from participants that our dome, games and puzzles provided a unique joy they had not experienced at Burning Man, not to mention a welcoming and shady place to escape the sun. Hilary shared a story of a woman who was new to word games and asked for help deciding what to play. Hilary set her up with our Burning Man word search. When she completed it, she came up to Hilary to pose for a photo. “She was so excited. She was thrilled with herself!” In a decommodified environment with a gifting economy there can be no better outcome than to share joy with those around you and we are thrilled to have been able to create this place for Black Rock City.

From Ground Plans to A Beautiful Space
Everything we learned from our dome build dress rehearsal was put to test on build day and proved to be invaluable. This included things like having Howard as our build lead, laying out the struts before they went up, having a team member entirely focused on quality control (thank you Joerg) and taking breaks throughout the day. Also, we all tip our hats to villagemate Eileen. Not only did she build the beautiful “WORD” letters that hung from the top of the dome, but she also was crucial in the speed and quality of the build. For multiple hours she alone went up and down the ladder, deftly bringing together and fastening the vertices of struts passed up to her from the ground crew.

As the sun began to set, we called the day, knowing we only had 5 vertices left. This was completed in the blink of an eye the next morning, allowing the team to focus on bringing Emily’s beautiful ground plan to life. As the hand-sewn cover wrapped the dome, followed by the setup of the furniture and decorations we had been collecting for months, there was a feeling of playa magic. Many of us shared the experience of seeing the space for the first time with excitement. “We actually did it!” On that Sunday, Word Play Cafe went from being an amorphous project to a place our villagemates were excited to explore and to bring their friends.

Highlights
One of our most popular events was a presentation about crossword construction planned by Larry. He is an elite crossword solver and has been attending the national competition for a number of years. Through this he has had the opportunity to meet the king of the crossword world, Will Shortz. Larry reached out to him in advance of Burning Man in hopes of being connected to a constructor of traditional crosswords as well as creative games of their own. Will introduced Larry to a fellow named Greg Pliska. He is a musical composer and word game creator who happened to be packing up for his first Burn in order to score the drone ballet (Natch). Greg gladly accepted Larry’s invitation to participate in our panel about puzzle design.

After the constructor presentation, he easily transitioned to teaching the attendees a game he had designed for Burning Man. “There were a number of categories (like minerals, major cities, etc) and each of us needed to come up with words in those categories,” said Larry. The challenge was to come up with words in each category that started with each of the letters to spell Burning Man. For Larry, manifesting this event was the most gratifying aspect of the project. Attendees loved it and he hopes to bring it back next year.

As was our original dream, we were able to manifest the daily NYT puzzle in real time. David drove multiple printers across the country and worked every day to ensure the puzzle was available, having to solve for power, dust and intermittent internet access.

And finally, there was our Wordle. Whether or not they were familiar with the game, participants thanked us over and over for creating a way to easily play the game on playa. It was especially gratifying to hear from people who had never played the game before and discovered that they could guess the secret word in six guesses or less almost every time.

Another aspect of the success of this project was the physical layout of the BLD. It was reimagined to account for all the new interactive projects and to bring long loved establishments like the Swiss Space Bar closer to the street. Our village had wonderful frontage on F that invited participants to interact with multiple offerings in one visit. Our Little Black (and White) dress party was just as we’d hoped: participants were able to float between us and the party at the bar so the games at the Word Play Cafe went into the night.

The Man Burns in 263 Days
It’s never too early to start planning for next year. We are already brainstorming ideas to go bigger and go better for 2023. Stand by for updates on what we will develop for next year’s burn. We will also share more about growing our community off-playa with events like our game parties and collaborations with other groups planning events involving word games.