Gen Katz is editor of Games4Girls.com, an online zine that focuses on games that appeal to girls. This is her first of many exclusive guest blogs on Your Studio.

In last Sunday’s New York Times, Jennifer Finney Boylan, bemoaning the endless primary battles along with the endless Maine Mud Season, wickedly suggests: “Instead of another round of debates, how about a ‘battle of wits’ like in The Princess Bride, in which one of two wine glasses is laced with deadly iocane powder by a neutral observer (say, Jim Lehrer) and then we find out ‘who is right and who is dead?’”

The Princess Bride, both the movie and the book, have made it into our shared cultural legends. Rob Reiner in his discussion about making the movie relates an episode about being in a New York café when the infamous John Gottti came in. They nodded and as Reiner was leaving, one of the body guards said, “I am Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die — I loved the book.” It’s that amazing shorthand that allows us to share and bond — even if it is only for a moment.

I had a somewhat similar experience, not with the bodyguard of a Mafia don, but by booksellers who searched through their inventory looking to find me copy so that I could join the club. Following them around while they were digging through their stock, I asked about the book. The most common answer was “I loved it.” Pressed further, I did get comments like, “I never knew what was going to happen next,” or that it “had everything: good, evil, disappointment, revenge, unjust accusations, and a lesson that life wasn’t always fair, but it was funny – very funny.”

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