In reality, Ted was a much better player than I was—he beat me in everything—but I think I was sufficiently competitive that he felt somewhat challenged,” Panton told The Daily Beast. “I don’t have a console, mostly as a time management tool, because if I had one, I would use it far too much,” he told The Daily Beast. Cruz said he wasn’t so much intentionally leaving moderators dangling as answering what he wanted. If asked a question Wednesday that he was previously asked on Monday, he will repeat his original answer nearly word for word, as if it were memorized, raising the risk of questions about how genuine he really is. “And, you look at the questions — ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don't you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’” 
 
 “How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about?” Cruz chided. “One of the fun things that I do with Caroline and Catherine is we get on the iPhone or the iPad and play games. At the moment, Cruz is playing “Plants vs. Zombies,” a game where users collect sunlight points to feed plants who fight off waves of zombies; “Candy Crush,” the puzzle game where he claims he’s in the 217th level; and “The Creeps!,” a tower defense game.
– Donald Trump may be preparing for Thursday night's GOP debate by scarfing cheeseburgers, but Ted Cruz has his own preparation strategies, he tells Politico in a look at how well the candidate is doing during the debates. While the site notes that the Texas senator's "brain trust has gathered more informally around tables to talk about expected lines of inquiry and attack" rather than hold mock debates, it's what Cruz does the day of the debate that's somewhat unexpected. Well, maybe not the Bible-reading part, or the part where he simply hangs out with his wife, Heidi, and two young daughters to "decompress," Politico notes. Instead, there's another stress reliever the self-confessed video-game addict indulges in: playing games on his iPhone, with Plants vs. Zombies 2 and TowerMadness 2 currently claiming the top spots in his game queue. (Check out what his favorite childhood video games were on the Daily Beast.)