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After 20 minutes of doing the same puzzle in Professor Layton and the Curious Village, my mother looks up at me with glowing eyes as she tries to suppress shouting “I’ve got it!”. We’ve been on each of our DS’ doing the exact same puzzle about four hours in to the puzzle happy Nintendo DS game for what seems like an eternity. She doesn’t hear me ask “well, what is it?” as she gazes in to her bottom screen, her focus entirely on the cinema bridging the submission of the answer, and the “Hey, dummy, you failed again” screen.

I hear Luke, that little bugger, apologize for what is no doubt the 50th time that night. “I’ve let you dowwwwwn, Professor…” he moans.

I moan too, as I get fed up with the game, close my polar portable, and head off to bed. I don’t even think she noticed I left, since I didn’t get a response to my “goodnight”. A few minutes later, I hear her head off to bed too, assuming she quit the frustrating brain-teaser like I did. The next day, I get to hear her gloat about how she knows the answer to “that stupid puzzle”, as well as the next four hours worth of them. In one day of owning and playing Professor Layton, my mother has blaster past me in to the fifth chapter, leaving me behind in what still feels like the prologue.

Not only did she double my play time overnight, she proved to me that she’s a complete and total gaming geek.

The bane of my gaming existence…

A little history lesson. Mum is the best Pac-Man player I know. When I was younger, we owned a miniature plug-in arcade Ms. Pac-Man machine. It was agony when we brought it out, not only because she would absolutely walk all over my score, but she’d play it for about 20 minutes straight. I’d sit there, waiting impatiently for her to hit just one ghost, but it happened so rarely I’ve sworn off playing it with her. I am thankful she’s forgotten about my plug-’n-play Pac-Man under my TV.

Fast forward ten years and she’s teasing my geekdom (she doesn’t condemn games - she just thinks there’s better things you could do with your time. I think she’s fooling everyone) as I lounge in front of my Xbox 360.

She owns a Nintendo DS, which is literally just a hundred dollar poker playing machine. She can pretend all she wants that she doesn’t like video games, and that they’re a waste of time, but deep down, she’s as hardcore as they come. Whether she likes it or not.

Now she’s addicted to Layton. And when I say addicted, I mean she’s playing it at every possible moment. Every time I walk in to the kitchen, it’s “I solved [puzzle x]” or “Oh! Have you seen [puzzle z] yet?” or some equivalent. As much as I try, I can not keep up with her. She’s nearing the final moments of the game, subtly taunting me about how far ahead of me she is.

The other bane of my gaming existence…

My mom is bragging to me about a video game? Awesome. It’s not just her dominating the entire family at the portable poker table, either - Professor Layton, if you didn’t know, is an incredibly hardcore puzzle game. Brain teasers, riddles, puzzles, algebraic math: Professor Layton is serious business, and my own mother, the one who wouldn’t be caught dead admitting to me that she’s “a gamer” is holding her own.

Well, holding her own for the most part.

Growing up I would look up cheats for games, just like any punk who can’t pass the final boss battle. Now I wake up and my mother has printed off 30 pages of Layton’s walkthrough - not to look at for help, but to fill in the blanks that the writer left. Each puzzle she solves she’ll double check that the answer is in her printed guide.

Mother Dyer is printing off cheats, and writing a guide.

While my secret plan to completely geekify my household is working exquisitely (dad digs his PS3, and loves to game with the family via DS Wi-Fi), the icing on the cake to this long tale of nerd conversion is that my mother for 20 years laughed out loud at a Penny Arcade comic.

She can solve algebra problems and look through any riddle, bluff her way to a gigantic poker pot through the DS, and wreck any pellet eating challenger that comes her way. She can clear Donkey Kong Country on the SNES on her own and knows what a “Tetris” really is. Knowing the context, mom chuckles the odd webcomic too.

If that doesn’t make her hardcore, then I don’t know what does. I do know that I’ll never hear the end of how totally freakin’ awesome she is that she completed Professor Layton and the Curious Village before me, and that I’m repeatedly begging for her help solving it.

She’s got no use for dual analog sticks yet, but like I said - the transformation of this household to complete geekdom is well on its way. Given the time, she’d no doubt figure out the intricacies of an FPS or RPG, but we’re not quite there yet.

One step at a time, mother. One step at a time.