Part of the appeal may be that, unlike many of its antecedents, I Love Bees could not be played just by sitting in front of a screen. Over the Internet, players were able to work together on puzzles, usually hidden in corrupted image files on ilovebees.com. Those answers were just starting points, however. Players then had to use them to respond to the mysterious calls that rang at hundreds of pay phones across the country every Tuesday. —Noah Shachtman —Sci-fi fans called into an alternate reality (NY Times | C-Net)