What interests me most about Will Shortz is the insight his his life and his spots on NPR have given me onto the natural human love of puzzles.
Although I personally do not get much of a kick from solving puzzles for their own sake, I definitely want to understand those who do. Seeing mathematician John H Conway give a lecture was also interesting because he was deriving immense pleasure from something while up on the stage -- and my best guess as to the nature of that something is puzzle-solving. Until that lecture, it had not occurred to me that puzzle-solving could be such an immense source of pleasure.
Although I personally do not get much of a kick from solving puzzles for their own sake, I definitely want to understand those who do. Seeing mathematician John H Conway give a lecture was also interesting because he was deriving immense pleasure from something while up on the stage -- and my best guess as to the nature of that something is puzzle-solving. Until that lecture, it had not occurred to me that puzzle-solving could be such an immense source of pleasure.