Go Big or Go Home

In the blink of an eye, over 180 sunsets have come and gone since the fires marked the end of the magical burn in 2023. There are now fewer days until our departure for Black Rock City than since we left last time. That’s a crucial milestone for those of us who mark time not with the coming and going of our birthdays or the turning of the page from December to January, but with the annual ritual of returning every year to a place we call Home. It’s a place where we can express ourselves and love each other in a way that’s not possible in the default world that we trudge back to.

Many of us think of our time at Burning Man not just as for fun but also as an opportunity for personal growth. The process of preparation leads to an opening of the heart. And if that portal remains open, we head off-playa and onto the pavement of 34 knowing ourselves better, our bags packed with the big dreams of what we want to focus on in the year ahead.

One of the vessels for this transformational experience that never fails to deliver is the art, which offers limitless possibilities of scale, complexity, whimsy, and beauty. Burning Man asks us all to answer this question: what is art anyway? 

At Word Play Cafe, we answer this question in many forms—with the paintings on our walls, the lanterns hanging from the ceiling, our inviting furnishings, and of course, the puzzles and games we design every year for Burning Man.

At the Word Play Cafe, we are all entrepreneurs at heart, and our creative process for this project inspires us to ask, how can we do this better? How can we do this bigger? Perhaps most importantly, how do we make our project more interactive by increasing the ways we play with our visitors and giving them more games to play together?

Last year, our dome was packed every day with people from all across Black Rock City. So of course, we had to up the ante this year and bring our games. And, why stop there when we could also take our games out of the city and onto the open playa. 

This year, we’re bringing our first mutant vehicle to Burning Man. It’s called “Fun Across,” and we’ll use it to give folks a ride around the playa while they play our games from the comfort of our observation tower. We will also run live game shows and facilitated group games when we drop anchor. After experimenting with a number of designs, including a giant yellow pencil, we decided on a simple black and white crossword design. We will also have teams roving around BRC on foot—the Word Nerds! You’ll find them dressed to the nines in black and white couture, carting around trays of stickers, pencils, our annual Burning Man grid, and analog versions of games inspired by games like Wordle, Connections and the flagship crossword.

We are lucky to have multiple members of the Burning Man DMV on our team, and they’ve brought successful vehicles to the playa in the past. And several of our newer recruits have the carpentry, electronics, lighting, and interior design skills needed to build the vehicle, as well as the institutional knowledge of what it takes to get both day and night DMV licenses.

Black Rock City is a decommodified space, but bringing our new projects to Burning Man will take a larger budget than our first two years. That’s why we’re asking for your financial support.

And while money’s great, of course, there are other ways to get involved too. We have 275 shifts to fill on-playa across build week, the event, and strike. So if you want to volunteer, please leave a comment here or on our Facebook group. No matter what, come on by for a cup of coffee, your daily word game, or a sunset cruise on Fun Across.