I Started a Wordy Game Night. Here’s What Happened.

Mar 26, 2026

At week nights, I spend my days building spaces and communities to help people, well, “find their people” and otherwise find connection. I help make space for people to feel seen and feel like they matter. This story is about something I built for myself, for the same reason.

I’ve loved words for as long as I can remember. Growing up (before the internet, so cut me some slack), I read the dictionary. The encyclopedia. Books, constantly, endlessly…so many, MANY books. I loved the stories, the escape. The far away worlds, dragons, princesses, and spaceships. In high school, one of my favorite classes was Latin and Greek, and something about tracing a word back to its roots felt like finding a secret door.

(Speaking of roots: did you know the the Latin root of “community” is a combination of “con”, meaning together, and “munis,” meaning shared responsibility. Hold onto that. It matters later.)

You guessed correctly that I love dad jokes and puns. Perhaps I should have been an etymologist given how I love the way language often includes little tiny surprises (like, learning that the opposite of “don” is “doff;” like, “on and “off”...that was new to me)! And I love Bananagrams. Unreasonably so. My Hinge profile literally says “I’m undefeated at Bananagrams,” which has generated far more challenges than dates.

So I wanted to find my people. The ones who get giddy over a good portmanteau. The ones who also read the dictionary for fun before they had anything better to do on a Saturday afternoon.

That’s why I founded Word Play Social, a monthly game night built around word games.

An invitation, not an announcement

Here’s a thing I’ve learned doing this work: you don’t launch a community. You invite people into one.

I started by going back to our own Connection Academy curriculum at week nights and using it to define the community. What is this for, who is it for, and why should it exist? I landed on this: Word Play Social is where connecting letters into words becomes the spark for connecting with each other.

Then I did something simple. I invited people. Friends. Folks at my coworking space. Fellow word nerds I’d collected. Not “announcing” a new thing, just saying: I’m making space for people like us. Want to come?

The first gathering was six people. Barely enough for a game of Scrabble. But, it was the start, the root…

From there, I grew it the old-fashioned way: newsletters, talking about it at parties, social media, and the quiet power of word of mouth. Now, 40+ people show up every month and we have over 300 people on our mailing list.

Building it the week nights way

We built week nights specifically to help community builders do what they set out to do: build community and create social connection. And week nights’ has been instrumental in growing Word Play Social.

One of my favorite features is that week night’s can automatically tag who’s attended before and who hasn’t. See, a second-timer is still deciding if this is their community and if they belong. But, a third-timer has already started to answer that question (and my heart is FULL from these folks!). Knowing who’s who means I can meet people exactly where they are, acknowledge the newcomers, celebrate the regulars, and make everyone feel like their presence is noticed (if you’ve read my prior posts, you know how much I care about people feeling seen).

Our week nights platform shows who’s attended consistently, so when I needed someone to help check people in or set up the space, I already knew who to ask. That sense of shared responsibility is then felt by my fellow Worders.

Then there’s the flake rate. We all think we know it. Free event? Assume half won’t show. Paid? Fewer no-shows. But thinking you know and actually knowing are different things. week nights shows me my ACTUAL flake rate, so I can make real decisions and keep the room full of curious, engaged players instead of guessing and hoping.

And the game fund, the small optional contribution that helps us keep buying new word games, I could see whether my ask was landing. Whether people felt invested enough to chip in. Turns out, they did. After our next event, I’m planning to build an audience in week night’s of people who’ve contributed across multiple gatherings and send each of them a personal note of thanks. Because that kind of investment deserves to be recognized.

Shared responsibility in action

Let’s go back to the root (I guess I like that word) of community. Con and munis…together, shared responsibility.

At our last event, over 50% of the people who showed up were returners. And 75% of worders contribute to the game fund every month. We owe it to each other to give back to our community.

I can see the community forming in the small things. So far, no one has been left sitting out of a game. People are bringing their own games. Suggesting we do other wordy-nerdy activities.

Together, we added one small ritual: at the end of every game, everyone claps. Win or lose. Because I want people to feel like they’re part of something, not just competing.

At our last event, before we called it a night, I looked around and saw most of the games had wound down. And people were just... talking.

Between gatherings, we stay connected on WhatsApp. We talk. It keeps us bound together, like two words crossed on a Scrabble board.

If only I had the words to describe it…

What’s next

My role is shifting. Less host, more nurturer (gardener?). I’ve already made new friends through this, and that alone makes it worth it.

Our next gathering is called “Words in Bloom,” you know, because you need a good pun now and again.

Word Play Social will be part of Community Week NYC (May 9-17). To find your people, visit www.communityweek.nyc.

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