Today is Mother’s Day and gifts are hard but proclaiming your love on the internet is eternal.

I am truly fortunate that my mom has made the effort to find ways to bond with her favourite (and only) son through PAD. In fact, she has been religiously playing for over 2,300 days and talking about PAD gives us something connect over. It is not uncommon for more “serious” conversations to be broken up with questions about PAD on whether this card is good or should I roll? etc. She sometimes visits this website (to my delight) and in the case of the most recent REMDra tournament, just looked at the image for active skill usage and was able to hit 999,999 all on her own.

Amusingly, she was quite anti-video gaming when I was growing up and my play time on the family computer was regulated and would occasionally go up by 15 minutes if I accomplished various tasks or scored well on certain math/logic tests. As such, I was truly surprised she wanted to give PAD a try but I believe it was tied to the actual puzzling aspect as it is a more mentally demanding game. Naturally she has no interest in the pretty girls nor cosmetic aspect and prefers to see that sweet sweet Clear message at the end of a dungeon.

MOMtastic’s Rank 885 is all her own doing as I only touch her account for difficult content, Box tidying/organization, and the occasional Ranking dungeon. While I am aware that it is easier to grind for Rank, that is not something she pursues and her current Rank is a byproduct of long-term playing.

Over the years, her puzzling skills have improved but still dislikes the reactive nature of Ranking dungeons and prefers to play through dungeons at her own pace.

Regardless, being able to bond over PAD with my mother has been a truly fantastic experience and hope this continues for the foreseeable future.

Happy Puzzling and Happy Mother’s Day!