The card game that taught us how to play together again

Being a shopping editor in 2020 would not get your name on any essential-workers lists. But writing about internet shopping when internet shopping was suddenly the only kind of safe shopping a person could do did make it feel a lot more urgent. Thus began the Strategist’s Great Pandemic Pivot.

First, we explained the difference between an N95 and a KN95, tested close to a hundred fabric face masks, and figured out the best masks for kids. Then, as Amazon and other retailers failed to keep up with the demands of the housebound hordes, we tracked down in-stock toilet paper from unlikely sources and found impossible-to-find essentials such as diapers, hand sanitizer, and pet supplies. After that, we directed our efforts toward things that weren’t exactly essential but helped pass the time, including flour for fledging sourdough starters, ankle weights, puzzles, bikes, and, for one memorable summer, inflatable backyard pools and roller skates. We wrote guides on how to do things for ourselves: install a window air conditioner, cut hair, tint brows, groom your dog, groom your husband, do an at-home eye exam, self-monitor a pregnancy, wax, give a tattoo, give a manicure, remove a manicure, and grow a coronavirus victory garden. We asked event planners how to throw weddings and bar mitzvahs and board-game nights and Mother’s Day brunches over Zoom. We figured out how to work out at home and how to work from home, how to protest safely, how to bundle up in unheated dining sheds, where to buy heated furniture for midwinter social-distanced hangs. Our readers bought fancy canned fish and mask chains and comfortable pull-on pants and board games — so many board games.

Even when we started to inch our way back into civilization from our carefully tended quarantine dens, some pandemic habits came with us. When we published this ode to a “divisive (but delightful)” little card game called Dutch Blitz one month before the World Health Organization declared the official end of the COVID-19 global health emergency, it became an immediate reader favorite. “This card game threatens to tear my family apart — but we can’t stop playing it,” warned contributor Laura Guidry. “I’ve brought it to bars and on hikes. I’ve ordered packs to give to friends going through tough times that involve waiting. I’ll persuade my husband to play a few hands between meetings as we both work from home and are slugging through the day.” After years of carefully skirting around each other at a respectable six feet of distance, maybe a competitive hand of cards was exactly what we all needed: a reason to gather, to play, to get up in each other’s faces, if just to shout “Blitz!” —D.P.