Word Play Cafe @ BRC 2022

Love word games? So do we!

We get great joy from our daily word game rituals and know many other Burners do too. So we decided to bring a brand-new project to the playa this year! Fueled by our own passions for crossword puzzles and word play, and further buoyed by the swell of interest in word games due to the pandemic (Wordle anyone?), we are creating a space in Black Rock City called Word Play Cafe.

Word Play Cafe will be housed in a 30ft dome in the BLD Village and will feature activities for all word game aficionados. In the morning, we will offer drip brewed coffee and the daily crossword puzzle. We will also host several events throughout the day on Mon-Fri such as Wordle, puzzle competitions, kids events and plenty of open play time for participants of all ages to come chill out in the dome to solve word puzzles, play board games like Scrabble, Boggle, Bananagrams, and Apples to Apples, or choose from a variety of custom games we created just for Burning Man! 

Our core team is comprised of folks from multiple camps across the playa's oldest village, the BLD. We are excited to be collaborating as a village to bring this unique and timely project to Burning Man.

Bringing a new project to the playa is very complex. Our team has been meeting weekly to address all the specifics such as dome construction , exterior and interior design, transportation, game sourcing and creation and more. 

We need your help to bring Word Play Cafe to the playa. We have a fundraising target of $10,000 for this year and we greatly appreciate any amount large or small that you are able to give. 100% of funds raised will be used to create and bring Word Play Cafe to the playa. No donations will be directed to any other purpose.  

Here's a breakdown of our budget:

Every donor will receive a commemorative sticker! We also have a few more original gifts we are excited to share.

The first 24 donors of $100 or more will receive a signed copy of “Drama in the Desert” a beautiful book of poetry, stories and original music set to the photographs of Holly Krueter and represents the art of nearly 100 people. The photographs will bring back memories of old school Burning Man when fire lit up the night (before LED’s took over the night landscape). The poetry and prose are timeless and reflect all of the emotional and physical complexity to be found in BRC. 

The book would also be a fantastic gift for anyone who wants to learn more about the spirit of Burning Man. 

We are also thrilled to have a collection of rare original maps, stickers and buttons designed by Lisa Hoffman. We will be holding multiple lotteries including ALL of our donors for these treasured pieces of Burning Man history. 

We are so grateful for your support of this project in any dollar amount!

You can also help by volunteering. Even if you are intimidated by the New York Times crossword, sometimes fail the Wordle, or haven't done a word search since you were 8, we still want you! We are looking for help with pre-event planning & production, support on Playa for build/tear down, and most importantly staff for the dome during our events throughout the week. 

For more info check out our website and our Facebook group.

We look forward to hearing from you!