Dating can be like assembling the silver monkey in Legends of the Hidden Temple, a challenge requiring wits, luck, and passing knowledge of primate anatomy. Skip the confusing steps of pickup artistry with today’s icebreaking Groupon to SpeedDC Dating. Choose from the following options:

• For $21, you get admission to any speed-dating event for one person (up to a $49 value).
• For $40, you get admission to any speed-dating event for two people (up to a $98 value).
• For $78, you get admission to any speed-dating event for four people (up to a $196 value).<p>

With branches that have appeared on Top Chef Masters and the Discovery Channel, SpeedDC Dating kindles romance with a quick-fire style of amiable introduction at two-hour events. Authentic English hosts narrate an evening of sophisticated conversation divvied up between bites of gourmet appetizers. Ladies lock down fresh looks unveiled by licensed cosmetologists in makeovers before introductions to 18 gentlemen. Newly dolled-up vixens stay seated while potential male paramours move among tables, rotating every six or seven minutes like an album containing the first half of Thriller. Scorecards keep a running tally of compatible qualities and migrate back to staffers scribbled with crushes, which are cross-referenced against other sheets and Cupid’s hunting license. Within 24 hours of date nights, inboxes flood with messages loaded with the email addresses of potential new love interests.

Guests are invited to stay and mingle after gab sessions hosted at a variety of cosmopolitan watering holes, and upcoming events will bring outgoing revelry to the Wisdom cocktail parlor and the Ritz-Carlton’s Fyve restaurant.