CHEESE TAC-TOE AND THE DEATH OF "HEY"

LOS ANGELES — This paper has conducted many serious investigations. This is not one of them. This is an investigation into cheese.

It began with a tip. A source informed your correspondent that somewhere inside MOOD Social & Dating, the intent-first app this paper covers with unapologetic interest, there exists a game called Cheese Tac-Toe, and that its official description reads, in full: "Flip the cheese to match a cheesy pick-up line, then send it."

I can now confirm that this is true. I can further confirm that it is only one of eighteen two-player icebreaker games tucked inside the app, and that together they represent the most delightful assault on the word "hey" since the invention of the exclamation point.

Here is the principle, and it's a genuinely smart one. The hardest part of talking to a stranger is that there's nothing to talk about. So MOOD Social & Dating gives you something to do. Alongside your hand of Offer cards, you're often dealt one to three game cards, and you can invite someone to play instead of proposing a plan. The games play in real time, together. And when the game ends, each of you decides whether you'd like to connect. If one of you doesn't, the app says so with a grace that deserves framing: "Different timing — that's all. No connection formed."

No ghosting. No ambiguity. Just a nice game and a kind goodbye.

The lineup, reviewed by an unqualified critic:

- Would You Rather. "Two paths. Choose your fate." A classic, and the fastest way to learn whether someone is a "fight one horse-sized duck" person. Critical information.

- Emoji Talk. "Trade messages using only emoji." Try expressing "I also think brunch is overrated" using only emoji. Your correspondent's best effort looks like a hostage situation at a waffle house.

- Finish the Lyric. "We start the line — you nail the next one." Nothing reveals a soulmate faster than two people getting the same song wrong in the same way.

- This or That. "Two choices, no overthinking."

- What Comes to Mind. "One word — first thought, no filter."

- Ad-Libbin'. "Fill in the blanks — make each other laugh."

- The Question Game. "Open questions — depth optional." The phrase "depth optional" should be the motto of every first date in America.

- Queer Trivia. "How well do you know your queer history?"

- Sports Complex. "Sports trivia — call your bracket."

- Cheese Tac-Toe. Discussed above. Discussed at length. Discussed, frankly, to my editor's growing concern.

The games also know which room they're in. The cannabis games (BudLibs, Munchie Match, and What Bud Is This?, which asks you to "Guess the strain") only appear in 420 Friends. The spicier ones, like Boundary Bingo ("Stamp your boundaries — pin the ones you both want"), only appear in the adults-only Casual MOODs. Nobody gets surprised by the wrong game in the wrong room. And if your partner leaves mid-game, the app consoles you with a random fun fact, such as, and I promise I am not making this up, "there are over 1,800 varieties of cheese in the world." The cheese runs deep here, reader. It runs all the way down.

The Wave, and its cousin the Rizz. Sometimes you don't want to play a game or make a plan. Sometimes you just want to say I see you. On MOOD Social & Dating, you double-tap someone's profile photo. In the Romantic, Platonic, and N.A.T.O. MOODs, that sends a Wave. In the Casual MOODs, it sends a Rizz, which is exactly what it sounds like. The other person can Wave Back or Rizz Back. It's free, it's instant, and there's a 24-hour cooldown per person, so nobody gets waved at forty times by an enthusiast.

And the Love Fence, which undid your correspondent completely. You know the bridges in Paris and elsewhere where couples hang padlocks to declare their love? MOOD Social & Dating built one for the people who are still looking. In the Long-term Relationship MOOD, you can hang a lock on a shared fence, a small, public declaration that you're here and you're hoping. Someone else can come along and open it, and when they do, a chat begins and you get a notification: "Someone connected with your lock! 💖"

A basic lock doesn't last forever. If nobody opens it after three days, it snaps, and the app tells you so plainly: "Your lock broke off 💔. Hang a new one?" Your correspondent read that line and had to go sit in the car for a bit. Because that is the whole brave, silly, hopeful business of looking for love, compressed into eight words. The lock broke. Hang a new one.

This paper has spent thirty-four editions arguing that dating stopped being fun because the machines made it feel like work. So it seems only fair to report, with a straight face and a slightly cheesy heart, that somebody finally built one that plays.