Pretty soon, it will be time to suss out your match and try to figure out appropriate blends to send them. Having had a couple of year's experience with such matters, I hereby present to you...
Woodsroad's
(Un)Official Guide
to
Sleuthing Your
Pipes Magazine (Un)Official Secret Santa
Match
~
By now, if you are as smart as me, you've realized that when you receive your match's name and address from Mike, that you will also find out what they submitted as their tobacco preferences. This would seem to make your job of selecting the perfect gift to be a snap, no? But exactly just how honest are people when they answer questionnaires, anyways? Statistics show that most people are flat out liars, and COVID has only made the situation worse, turning even the most mild-mannered among us into raging narcissistic psychopaths.
Here are a few simple tips for sleuthing the deep desires hidden behind the mask of psychotic indifference of your assigned target:
1. Ouija Board
No secrets are safe from the Ouija Board! Conjure the spirit of your match and get the deep dish on their favorite blends! Of course, this will only work if your match is already dead, but I know a guy who can help you with that. Just ask.
2. Public records
Chances are, if your match is anything like most of the people on this forum, he's been arrested more than once. And chances are even better that he was arrested for stealing pipe tobacco. Public police records will often list the blend, production date and tin size of your match's purloined goods. Divorce records are also fertile hunting grounds, since many folks here are already on their third of fourth marriage already. Court proceedings will always give a detailed list of shared property, and the husband's tobacco collection often times falls under that category.
3. Ask the Significant Other
Nobody knows your match better than their Significant Other. Wives, husbands, domesticated animals...all of them know your match's secret desires and pleasures better than you do. So drop your match a PM and casually ask for their girlfriend/wife's cell phone number. If they ask you why, just say "You'll find out...probably"
4. Ask the Government
While your match's girlfriend or wife may have a firm grasp on what makes life enjoyable for them, not everyone is lucky enough to have another person in their life that will share that pleasure with complete strangers. Luckily, most of us live under the thumb loving care of an insatiably carnivorous benevolently curious government. They know everything. Few of us are aware, however that a quick Freedom of Information Act request can get you everything you'll ever want to know about your match, including their true pipe tobacco preferences. File that request early, and share the more amusing bits with the rest of us, OK?
-Woodsroad
Woodsroad lives in rural Bucks County, PA and enjoys smoking a pipe and smoking out his Secret Santa Match. He last wrote for us on the subject of why so many Secret Santa participants have never moved out of their parent's basement.