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I will give an example of one of mine. I play MLB the show on the PlayStation. A baseball game. In the game, there is a mode called Road to the Show. You create a player, get drafted, have a career and try to make it to the Hall of Fame. Not super nerdy yet.
I create excel spreadsheets of my players stats and achievements (the game does this some but not as in-depth as me) but I also keep track of all of my computer-generated teammates. I then compile these stats into all-team and all-time career stats. I basically create an alternate universe of baseball. I then vote in my own Hall of Famers.
Lame I know. But I enjoy it.
Oh, I have so many nerdy obsessions. But I do go through the Goodreads feed every single night around 10 o’clock and I play around with my list and I change the orders of things. I add things and I move things. I literally spend about 20 minutes more or less sometimes more, looking up what people are reading and adding and moving and changing on my phone. Every single night. And then there’s all the dailies. The New York Times games, two other games on my phone, daily French. This is such a great and fun topic and I can’t wait to hear what other people admit to enjoying…..
Mine is absolutely an obsession with jigsaw puzzles, especially those from Charles Wysocki. I have been collecting them for quite a few years and I know I own well over 100 by now. Yes, I do them over and over again although a few have been relegated to the back of the closet as they are just so hard!
Ellen wrote: "Mine is absolutely an obsession with jigsaw puzzles, especially those from Charles Wysocki. I have been collecting them for quite a few years and I know I own well over 100 by now. Yes, I do them o..."I have known some people that have turned puzzles into wall hangings. Picture frames and such. Do you ever do this?
Amy wrote: "Oh, I have so many nerdy obsessions. But I do go through the Goodreads feed every single night around 10 o’clock and I play around with my list and I change the orders of things. I add things and I..."
I like this.
Ellen wrote: "Mine is absolutely an obsession with jigsaw puzzles, especially those from Charles Wysocki. I have been collecting them for quite a few years and I know I own well over 100 by now. Yes, I do them o..."Charles Wysocki are my favorites. I'm doing one now with ice skaters. Of course there are two horses.
I have many nerdy obsessions - too many to list. One is that I set aside time on Sunday evenings to watch a series of four documentaries. This is my only television time. Not only is this a nerdy thing to do, but the documentaries are about nerdy topics such as archeology, world history, scientific innovations, and world travel. I used to play an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) in a world of castles and dragons, where my avatar went on quests.
Jason wrote: "I will give an example of one of mine. I play MLB the show on the PlayStation. A baseball game. In the game, there is a mode called Road to the Show. You create a player, get drafted, have a care..."
My husband had a spinner baseball game called All-Star Baseball, As a kid, he made up leagues and discs. (The discs were proportional to the players' real stats.) He got my son into it as well. In the '90s, my son was able to write a simple program to create the discs. All this was before realistic 3D video games.
I am addicted to the NY Times word games - Spelling Bee, Connections, Strands, Wordle. The Washington Post also has one called Keyword. I do the crosswords Thurs-Sun. My husband does the easier Mon-Wed (often with my help). I also like some word games that are found in puzzle magazines or online, like Double Crostics, Word Rummy and Split Decisions. And during the pandemic, I started doing Cryptograms, which I never used to do.
My husband and I play Scrabble pretty much every day and have since before we were married. For many years we ran a Scrabble club in Minneapolis and participated in and/or directed tournaments. We are very evenly matched, and now our son is at our level (or better) as well.
I am off and on trying to learn Welsh, something my husband has learned because of his roots. I've been going to one-week courses for a couple of years, but if you don't do anything in between, you don't get far!
For a few years I have been participating in the Seasonal Reading Challenge Group on GR. To complete the challenge, you usually have to read 60-80 books in a 3-month period, with some of them very specific tasks. I first did it specifically because I never would finish it, so no pressure. But then once I got it and now I read some odd things just for the glory of finishing (and if you finish, you get to write a challenge task for the next season.) This level of reading is super nerdy for most people!
Booknblues wrote: "Ellen wrote: "Mine is absolutely an obsession with jigsaw puzzles, especially those from Charles Wysocki. I have been collecting them for quite a few years and I know I own well over 100 by now. Ye..."I found a puzzle piece about a year or so ago and I'm not sure which puzzle it came from. Of all things it is a piece with the 2 legs of a horse. Do you know how many Wysocki puzzles have horses? LOL!!!!
Ellen wrote: "Booknblues wrote: "Ellen wrote: "Mine is absolutely an obsession with jigsaw puzzles, especially those from Charles Wysocki. I have been collecting them for quite a few years and I know I own well ..."Almost all of them.
What's funny is that I don't think of my 'interests' and passions as necessarily specifically nerdy, especially since I know so many others that enjoy them. But of course they are and I do count myself as being quite nerdy. So....
I too like jigsaw puzzles, though no particular obsession on artist or style as I really like to mix them up. Years ago I was hooked on the ones where you solve a mystery while putting them together -- I still own most of those and was thinking about starting one again as I have no memory of any of the plots or solutions. One of the most challenging puzzles I've done in recent years was The House of the Seven Gables from Doodles. Surprisingly difficult ones are any of the Vogue or New Yorker covers. I do like a challenge but not impossible ones - it needs to reveal an image as I put it together.
@Ellen - I have 2 puzzle pieces needing to find their puzzles again. One is a puzzle I think I passed on to my sister at Christmas, the other is one I have no idea where it ended up, or if I still own it (it's a small large piece puzzle in a small round cylinder box - easy to tuck somewhere). It seems no matter how careful I am, I seem to lose a piece, usually when breaking it up and putting it in a bag in its box. It appears months even as much as a year later, just sitting in the middle of the floor. So odd. Oh and I have no pets or small children - it's just me that manages to lose them.
Word puzzles - almost exclusively Crossword Puzzles these days. Since one of my life long BFF's is perhaps the leading current female puzzle constructer in the US, it's not surprising - and I also am endlessly amused when a conversation we've had shows up as a puzzle theme. I actually stopped doing the NYTimes puzzles as I am very aware of the editor's misogyny and favoritism to white male constructors and the NYTimes failure to address claims of discrimination brought by constructors of color (my friend has not submitted to the NYTimes for years due to certain actions by its puzzle editor against her). Instead, I do the WSJ, The New Yorker, and others whose puzzles I am finding far more interesting and challenging that those in the NY Times or LA Times for example. Puzzle editors are almost all male and white - it's a very thick glass ceiling. The women are setting up their own businesses -- online and publishing - as a result and that's where I throw my puzzle solving.
Sorry for the soapbox, but the discrimination is so deeply entrenched in the puzzle world, and is only starting to be revealed.
I'm an opera fan - especially love Baroque but also a lot of the more unusual ones.
I love board games though my 'playmates' for them are now scattered across the US and I've not found replacements yet, mostly through a lack of time.
I am passionate about counted cross stitch.
Reading - I definitely have some quirky, nerdy tastes. I mean, I read Proust over a 9 month period! I'm currently doing a daily read of The Odyssey! In high school I assigned my teen self reading lists of classics to read in the summers!
There are however no spreadsheets in my life, nor stats monitoring except to the extent of what I read each year as maintained on GR. Nor will there ever be.
I'm sure there are more --- the games from the virtual 2024 Jacquie Lawson Advent calendar for example I am still playing regularly.
I'd say board games. I play once/month with a friend in person. I have recently connected with cousins to play - more like only once or twice/year. I have another friend I've introduced to some board games (I probably see her once every couple of months) recently, as she's had more time with both parents having passed away the past 2 or 3 years.
I play online twice/month - each time with different people (well, one other person overlaps).
It's the European games that I play more of: Settlers of Catan if there are at least three people; Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Puerto Rico (those are the older ones). Newer ones: Azul, Wingspan.
Those are the in-person games I have, but there are many more I play online. Most of the above can be played on the board game arena site, plus Sushi Go, Seven Wonders, Viticulture, Century: Spice Road, Terraforming Mars, Agricola, Alhambra, Hanabi...
I'd still be up for an online video chat plus board gaming (you'd need an (free) account on boardgamearena.com, but could easily create one) if anyone is interested.
I am in the board game and jigsaw puzzle camp. I love board games, but my husband does not, so I don't get to play nearly as often as I would like. Usually I get to play at family gatherings, and at the girls game night that a group of us recently established. We get together once a month or so to play. It's always so much fun.I just started a jigsaw puzzle last night. I have quite a stack to put together, between friends and family and the occasional puzzle I find at the free puzzle exchange at my library.
I also like word games on my computer and phone. I like to think they help keep my mind sharp!
Huge Puzzler here... But I must say my company is the White Mountain Company. Because I like that they are so busy and vibrant that one is able to do the puzzle and figure it out. I hate a huge amount of sky and water where half the puzzle is the same shading. I rarely get to do them, given what my life looks like. But I am about to go on vacation with 8 books, two puzzles, Rummy Q, and a few other games...
I play an old-school RPG called Heroes of Might Magic. Put out in the late 80s and they continue to make new ones. Addicted to the older ones and addicted is more the word than an obsession.I also have a word game on my phone that I play before I start my evening reading.
Yes, of course I have nerdy things I like; it's in my DNA :) I can't list them all, but two of them I do in my head while bored or tuning out my Aspie's monologues at breakfast (she knows and isn't offended if it's not important.) I like to make words of four or more letters from other words plus find all of the prime factors in numbers (I couldn't care less about finding all of the factors.) Yes, numbers and words, what can I say? Even if I'm walking in my house to music sometimes I'm making words from a book title or author's name I have out. I don't currently do all of the nerdy hobbies I've had, but crewel embroidery was one. I don't usually do puzzles because after a day or two of setting good time limits I get too engrossed and waste too much time. We also don't play much scrabble anymore; we replaced it with Quiddler, but haven't been playing that for the past couple of years. I used to play primarily with my middle daughter who has moved out.
There are more things, but that's plenty for now.
It's not really a secret, but I am really into planners & stationary. I have a specific brand of planner I love and use (Hobonichi and Jibun Techo) and I carve out time almost daily or on the weekends to journal, plan, and collect ephemera which I put into my journal layout. I collect stickers and washi and use that to decorate. My favorite thing to do with my free time, besides read, is watch youtube plan-with-me videos while I jam in my planner :P
Ellen wrote: "Mine is absolutely an obsession with jigsaw puzzles, especially those from Charles Wysocki. I have been collecting them for quite a few years and I know I own well over 100 by now. Yes, I do them o..."LOVE Wysocki puzzles!
Amy wrote: " hate a huge amount of sky and water where half the puzzle is the same shading. .."Many years ago when we were young single women, my BFF Moira and I spent a New Year's Eve together in her apartment putting together a jigsaw of a thunderstorm over a lake. It was all midnight blue, except for the lightning strikes. I insisted on arranging the pieces around the frame by shape ... then I'd stare at them a while, pick up a piece and place it. After doing this several times, Moira shouted, "HOW do you DO that!" It did take us into the wee hours of the new year to finish, but we DID finish (including a quick break near midnight to run to the local Baskin Robbins for a treat).
My biggest nerdy obsession is math puzzles ... specifically Kukuro (or Cross Sums). LOVE those puzzles. I order them from Penny Press in packs of 20 volumes at a time. I work them when I'm listening to audiobooks. (But not the last two months...)
Book Concierge wrote: "Amy wrote: " hate a huge amount of sky and water where half the puzzle is the same shading. .."Many years ago when we were young single women, my BFF Moira and I spent a New Year's Eve together i..."
I too sort by shape when doing a big one color section -and study and place a piece the same way.
Book Concierge wrote: "My biggest nerdy obsession is math puzzles ... specifically Kukuro (or Cross Sums). LOVE those puzzles. I order them from Penny Press in packs of 20 volumes at a time. I work them when I'm listenin..."She really does. I saw it every day on our trip to Yellowstone!
Book Concierge wrote: "My biggest nerdy obsession is math puzzles ... specifically Kukuro (or Cross Sums). LOVE those puzzles. I order them from Penny Press in packs of 20 volumes at a time. I work them when I'm listenin..."Yes, I love those, too, but since after a couple of days I don't know when to stop I stopped doing them. I first saw them called Cross Sums; I think you're the one who told me the real name, but I can't remember for sure.
Book Concierge wrote: "My biggest nerdy obsession is math puzzles ... specifically Kukuro (or Cross Sums). LOVE those puzzles. I order them from Penny Press in packs of 20 volumes at a time. I work them when I'm listenin..."I love math and logic puzzles. I used to order boxes of them too, but from Dell. There is a British company I liked too. If the print were larger, I’d spend hours doing those instead of listening to audiobooks. I also really like the pic-a-pix puzzles. I can do them online while listening to audiobooks.
I suppose my interest in historical women is a nerdy obsession. I research and give regular talks on them, sometimes for pay. In today's NY Times Book Review section, I immediately recognized a picture of Margaret Fuller. She has been called America's First Feminist but is little known. I actually have a presentation in costume where I impersonate her. So I had to add Bright Circle: Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism to my TBR. If I buy it, I can deduct it as a business expense!
What is you secret nerdy obsession?
I've come to the belief that everyone has one. Something that we enjoy doing that the majority of others probably would think is stupid, a waste of time, or just super nerdy. It may not be secret anymore.