Heaneyland!

Enjoy my dulcet pontificating

While I was at the Stamford crossword tournament, I was (along with four other competitors and constructors) interviewed by Dean Olsher of Public Radio International's "The Next Big Thing". The main subject of his interview was not the crossword tournament itself, but why people solve crosswords. I'm reasonably pleased with the portion of my interview that's excerpted in the piece, in that I sound sufficiently articulate, but I do feel slightly misrepresented. My segment talks about how I feel glazed over after a three-hour run of solving crosswords, but Olsher frames this in the context of puzzle addiction. While it's certainly true that puzzle solving can be addictive, and it's also true that I have no shortage of compulsive aspects to my personality (as anyone who has seen my CD shelves can attest), my own puzzle-solving jags have less to do with addiction to crosswords and more to do with the fact that I am getting paid to solve them.

Apart from that extremely minor infelicity, it's a nicely done piece, and you can listen to it here (scroll down for a link to the crossword segment by itself).