Thanks for sending in this week's take, Thu. Now, admittedly, while I’m well versed in tennis, squash is a sport I knew almost nothing about. My knowledge of the sport started and stopped with “the ball they hit looks like it would really hurt.” I also assume that most people are generally unfamiliar with squash outside of what the court looks like, seeing as it’s not a very popular sport. Given that tennis has roughly a billion fans worldwide, it’s likely that most would disagree with what Thu said, especially since tennis fans are often snobby and a little elitist about the difficulty of their sport — myself included. However, I couldn’t draw conclusions without first seeing what squash is all about, so I did a little field research with the Brandeis Squash Club. The first thing that threw me off was the ball. Watching squash you would probably assume that the ball is a small rubber bullet that you need to fear hitting your face at risk of death, but it actually barely bounces. Thu, also the president of the Brandeis Squash Club, explained that the ball actually heats up as you play and gets bouncier as the game goes on, adding an extra layer of difficulty when playing. The rules are simple: Serve by standing in a designated area on one half of the court and make sure the ball hits off the wall to the other half, and it’s basically a free-for-all from there. Any hit against the wall that’s not too high or too low means your opponent has to hit it back, no matter how unfair it seems — and there will be some balls that seem impossible to hit. It seems to me that a lot of the game is positioning, making sure you’re in the right place at the right time, something that I was mostly unable to get my muscle memory to do as Thu beat me 50-1 — but who’s counting? Despite my shortcomings, after about an hour and a half of playing I felt pretty capable, albeit not confident that I could win a real match. I think my time playing tennis has given me a big boost in my ability to play squash, as most racket sports usually have a pretty big learning curve, but it is possible I was able to overcome that at least a little bit. I have to say I disagree with Thu’s take because after playing for a while, while still losing, I felt that I understood why I was losing each point and how I could improve, which is something I still have trouble with while playing tennis. Now you could say I just suck at tennis, which isn’t totally untrue, or that I am a miraculous squash prodigy, which is definitely untrue, but this was just my experience from my short time with squash. I’ve got to say it’s super fun to play. There’s a maneuver called a boast which is when you hit the ball off the side wall and then hit the front wall; I did it one time and it was probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. So if you take anything away from this week’s Hot Take, it should be that squash is awesome and you should go pick up a racket and give it a try.