Happy Tuesday! Join the upper echelons of love.

🌥️ Today's weather: Cloudy with a high near 91.

🎵 Sounds like: "Mind Games"

💰 Situational awareness: It's Free College Application Week in Texas. All public colleges and universities are waiving undergraduate application fees for state residents through ApplyTexas.

Today's newsletter is 931 captured words — a 3.5-minute read.

Younger adults are now more likely than their elders to play chess, according to recent YouGov data.

Why it matters: The centuries-old game is becoming a Gen Z phenomenon.

Zoom in: The Dallas area has developed a booming chess scene, with several local clubs that promote chess as a way to meet new people.

• The North Dallas Chess Club has been around for five years. The Frisco Chess Club opened in August.
• UT Dallas' chess team placed fourth earlier this year in the FIDE World University Team Chess Championships in Kazakhstan.
• Tomorrow, Chinese-Canadian woman grandmaster Nemo Zhou will visit Dallas to play against North Texans who believe they can beat her in chess. The competition will be live streamed.

What they're saying: 30-year-old chess master and educator Levy Rozman tells Axios the game was considered uncool when he was growing up.

• "Nowadays, kids come up to me who love chess and they look like they would've bullied me in school," he says.

The big picture: Chess play spiked in 2020, with online gaming and the Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit." Momentum continued with news of a major cheating scandal, arrival of a chess bot called Mittens and an infamous table slam, Rozman says.

• Now, there are popular chess livestreamers (like Rozman, aka GothamChess), chess dating clubs, chess nights at bars and even chess romance scenes on TV.

By the numbers: As of June 1, there were 6.4 million active U.S. Chess.com players, up from 4 million on the same date the year prior, according to data shared with Axios.

• And there was nearly a 10% increase in chess experiences on Eventbrite nationally from 2024 to 2025, the ticketing platform tells Axios.

The intrigue: Rozman says women grew from roughly 1% of his YouTube audience in 2020 to more than 10% today. They now make up about 25% of viewers of his "How to Play Chess" video.

What we're watching: As chess grandmasters keep getting younger, we have to wonder if Generation Alpha will keep the game's popularity in play.

Chess isn't the only game capturing young people's attention.

Zoom in: Compared to their elders, those under 45 are much more likely to have tried newer games like Bananagrams, Catan and Wingspan, according to YouGov data.

• And adults under 30 are more likely to care about winning, per the data.

Zoom out: Many Gen Zers are turning to analog activities as a way to reclaim time spent on screens.

The intrigue: Mahjong is nearly as popular among those under 45 and those older, per the survey.

💰 Ken Paxton took more than 800 trips apparently unrelated to his job as attorney general, accompanied by state-funded security detail which cost roughly $2.7 million. (Texas Tribune and ProPublica)

🤠 Kacey Musgraves hosted two shows in Dallas this weekend and surprised Sunday's crowd with a performance by three brothers who were detained by ICE earlier this year. (Dallas Observer)

🏒 Dallas Stars forward Matt Duchene is expected to miss three months of the NHL season after going through core muscle surgery. (ESPN)

⚖️ A Dallas County jury found a 30-year-old Dallas woman guilty of intoxication manslaughter in a crash that killed SMU student Honor Wallace in 2023. Lynlee Pollis faces up to 20 years in prison. (DMN)

Flamin' Crunch Pizza is one of the hottest additions to the State Fair of Texas this year, and it's actually good.

The intrigue: Created by Tom Grace of Tommy G's, the dish was a finalist in this year's Big Tex Choice Awards. The pizza has a queso base and is topped with more jalapeño cheddar queso and a handful of Flamin' Hot Cheetos.

• You can also get the famous pickle pizza from the same stand.

Where: Look for the Tommy G's stand in the Midway section, near the Tilt-a-Whirl water ride.

Cost: 16 coupons.

Six-word review: Childhood guilty pleasure reimagined as pizza.

Pro tip: Look out for these brand activations as you walk the fairgrounds. We got free food, beverages, skincare and a customized hat on Friday.

🤩 Any other must-have foods at the State Fair of Texas? Click reply to this email and let us know!

Speaking of the state fair, DJ Duo Two Friends brought out a trumpet player on Friday to add a unique twist to their pop music set.

• The trumpet was a nice addition, but we couldn't take our eyes off this massive stuffed dinosaur that its owner probably won at a fair game.

State of play: The fair's Chevrolet Main Stage performances — free with fair admission — have moved indoors this year.

• Rapper Paul Wall performed on Saturday while grieving the death of his mom.
• "She was so proud of me to get the opportunity to perform at the State Fair, so with a heavy heart, I still wanted to show up for my fans," the Texas native wrote in a Facebook post.

The bottom line: The fair has something for everyone, even the stuffed dinosaur.

This newsletter was edited by Bob Gee.

Our picks:

🀄️ Naheed is reading about the downsides of Texas' mahjong revival.

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