mess with vs play with

mess with

verb
  • To joke around with or dupe someone, in either a friendly or unfriendly manner. 

  • To interfere with. 

  • To diss; to put down. 

  • To admire, enjoy, or approve of. 

play with

verb
  • Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: play with. 

  • To trick. 

  • To sexually stimulate a person or a person's erogenous zone. 

  • To fiddle with; make small adjustments to, for example to something mechanical in order to improve its performance. 

How often have the words mess with and play with occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )