It was November 2025. I was a 26-year-old woman who had been single for nearly two years, and I had run out of ways to meet other single people in the metro.
At bars everyone is preoccupied with the pals they came with, and who wants to bother them? Hinge? Bleak! And it’s exhausting to flatten the experience of meeting you into an online ad. But a post about Dave and Buster’s Singles Arcade Night intrigued me. I love the arcade and I love appetizers. I bought a ticket. What could go wrong?
And for the next 10 months I found myself in a grueling on-again/off-again, will-they/won’t-they situation—not with a new lover, but with Dave and Buster’s Singles Arcade Night.
Organized through a national company, Jigsaw Dating, the event cost $24.99 with a $1.99 shipping fee (curious, since the tickets are accessed through a phone app). Tickets for men had already sold out; the age range was 25-45.
A week after I purchased my ticket, Dave and Buster’s Singles Arcade Night was postponed indefinitely. A private company had rented out the Southdale Dave and Buster’s for an end-of-fiscal-quarter celebration; management wouldn’t give me any more details. I would just have to sit in my apartment, single and alone, waiting for Jigsaw to schedule another Dave and Buster’s Singles Arcade Night.
The company offered me two free tickets to other Jigsaw happenings, and I humbly accepted. I used one ticket to attend a round of coffee-shop speed-dating at Duck Duck Coffee that same November, where one man and I discussed equitable disability access for Minneapolis transit and another man described to me his favorite dish in Bhutanese cuisine.
Speed dating was fine, but it didn’t satisfy my impulse to meet other singles while playing Frogger and drinking a beer. The next scheduled Dave and Buster’s Singles Arcade Night was January 23, 2026, which was also the Day of Truth and Freedom economic blackout and protest. I was not at Dave and Buster’s that day; there were bigger fish to fry.
Not until June, eight months after I bought my original ticket to Dave and Buster’s Singles Arcade Night, did I finally receive an email with the subject line: “IT’S BACK: Singles Arcade Night.”
But.
The day before the event, I received another fateful email with the subject line: 🚨 POSTPONED: Singles Arcade Night, July 23rd - Minneapolis 🚨. “We’re big believers in only putting on events when all the pieces are perfectly in place, so we’d rather wait and do it right.” Pieces perfectly in place? Clever puzzle entendre, Jigsaw.
I almost gave up and requested a refund. I’d turned a year older in the time that had elapsed since I entered this strange affair with Dave and Buster’s Singles Arcade Night. Did Dave and Buster’s Singles Arcade Night even exist? I had no real evidence that it did.
Still, when I got word that the rescheduled date was a month later on August 20, I promptly emailed asking to please apply my ticket to the rescheduled date. No response. I messaged Jigsaw through the app. Same result. Tireless forces were still at work to keep me from finding love at Dave and Buster’s.
Ultimately, I bought another ticket— Dave and Buster’s Singles Arcade Night and I had too much history to give up now. The cost had gone up $12 from the price I paid in November 2025. Admission was now $36.98. I also noticed that the age bracket had shifted; this was now for ages 30-45. But I wasn’t gonna let something as minor as a three-year age deficit hold me back now.
When August 20 finally rolls around, I carefully select my outfit (nondescript T-shirt and trousers with my favorite Pavement baseball cap) and make my way to Southdale. I arrive at the host stand 20 minutes early—I’d been waiting since November, and I was not going to be late.
I fill out a nametag: “Hello, I’m _______” (“Carly,” of course) and “Ask me about _______” (“the East Coast”—I’ve been unable to shut up about my recent Boston vacation).
And we’re off.
I sit down with five men already gathered at a big table together. R. is 45. His name tag says to ask him about art. “Are you an artist?” I ask. No, he works in politics collecting data, but after work, he enjoys painting pictures of cartoon characters he likes. He shows me a picture of Pickle Rick he made. A. wasn’t going to be drinking that night and hands me his drink ticket.
Two other women show up. M. is 26 and a paraprofessional at a local school. After chatting with me for a minute, she leans in. “Truth be told,” she whispers, “I have a date with someone from Hinge on Sunday. I just wanted to see what this whole thing was about.” We chuckle about what a soulless abyss Hinge is. This is our life.
As more people arrive, topics of conversation include whether we’ve been to a Jigsaw event before, what we’re drinking, and the subject we invited each other to ask about on our nametag. Many nametags implore that you ask about their dog. Some people left the “Ask me about…” prompt blank, but when I hand them a marker and insist that they fill it out, it’s clear that they had an answer in their head the whole time. Sometimes it just takes a little nudge.
P. had been at the coffee shop speed-dating event that I attended in November. As at Duck Duck, he neglected to fill out his “Ask me about…” prompt. He said he goes to many Jigsaw events; I imagine he’s grown weary of telling others to ask him about anything.
N. is 37, a fact that I had to draw out of him. “Are you 30?” I ask. He nods. “Yeah, I’m above 30.” Not what I asked. When I tell him I’m 27, he asks if I’m even allowed to be here. I have read the terms and conditions, and the ages in the description are merely guidelines, all that’s truly required is that you’re over 21— and I tell N. this.
L. is 27 too. Her nametag invites you to ask her about art. “Are you an artist?” I ask. No, she’s getting her doctorate in occupational therapy, but she likes to crochet. She holds up her chic crocheted brown purse with gold hardware. “This is this project’s first time out of the house!” More commiseration about Hinge.
S. is 28 and his nametag says to ask him about cars. “Are you a technician?” I ask. He nods and says that too many kids in Woodbury will purchase a European car, not take care of it, then get sticker shock when brakes cost $1,000. I say that this is interesting information, and I am telling the truth.
K. is 44 and going on a cruise next week; A. hits a griddy across a circle of chatting folks who laugh along. After we’ve gotten to know everyone, we begin to gravitate to people we’ve connected with most.
M. is 27, and we talk a lot about board games. He describes one to me that follows a similar structure as Risk, but the premise involves woodland animals competing for control of the forest. When the facilitator encourages us to hit the arcade, M. and I choose a giant Crossy Road console. He intentionally hits a button that gets me hit by a train in the game. I don’t laugh. He buys another round of gameplay for us with his Power Card and is forgiven.
We do extremely well at the digital Monopoly game, earning four railroads and eight hotels across the board, including Vermont Avenue and Park Place. When C., an immigration paralegal who moonlights as a stage actress, stops by to chat with us, Martin and I show her what a killing we’ve made.
We invite C. and three other people to play Pac-Man Battle Royale CHOMPionship Deluxe.
After beating everyone’s ass at Pac-Man Battle Royale CHOMPionship Deluxe, M. informs me that the game where you can earn the most tickets is the Spiderman Coin Pusher. He’s right: I earn nearly 400 tickets after a few extremely stimulating rounds of launching coins at Spiderman-themed targets. This game depletes both our Power Cards.
Between the two of us, M. and I have earned 670 tickets. Many of the prizes in the Winner’s Circle are geared toward children or cost too many tickets, but I pick out a green Dave and Buster’s branded cup with a wacky straw, and Martin chooses two mini frisbees. “For the office,” he says—M. organizes post secondary programming for cognitively disabled adults. These prizes deplete our ticket balance to exactly zero. We high five.
Before I leave, M. and I follow each other on Instagram. Most of the other guests have gone home. I tell him that I’m not quite sure if I’m interested in anything romantic, but that he was an awesome hang. He says something similar.
I’d follow C. on Instagram earlier that night as well; she’d been telling me about the last production she starred in and said that the next time she was cast, I’d have to come see her perform.
As I walk out to my Subaru that night, I mentally review my inventory. I had gained: two Instagram friends, a wacky-straw Dave and Buster’s cup, the long-forbidden knowledge of what Dave and Buster’s Singles Arcade Night is like, and the comfort of knowing just how many other singles would rather spend the night in Edina than even one more minute on Hinge.
