Inside Social Games

For a young couple living in Chile and teaching English, playing Scramble together on Facebook became an outlet for their love of word games. Tyler Richardson and his fiancée Christine play so often that Tyler came up with a brilliant idea: to propose to her in a game.

With the help of Zynga, Tyler sent her on a secret agent scavenger hunt within a special Scramble game containing the words “Will You Marry Me.”  Her mission was to decode the message before time runs out and save the world.

“I had been trying to think of a creative way to engage for a while,” said Tyler, remembering his planning process. “We like spy movies, so I decided to send her on a scavenger hunt where she would be a secret agent. The Scramble folks were nice enough to fill in a board with a ‘marry me’ message and it became a mission to decode the secret message before time ran out and she was discovered.”

How did it work out?

“I think she really liked it, at least that is what she told me!  She said yes,” Tyler grins.

The couple, who met in college at UC Santa Barbara, will be finishing their teaching stint at a community college in Conception, Chile, before they tie the knot later this year.