Daily Telegraph Puzzlist. I have always followed my own star, pursued what inspires me, without much concern for personal wealth and profit. I am very project-orientated, with an obsessive desire to create to the highest quality I am capable of. I have a positive critical process which involves exhaustively improving my product until I can imagine no better way to represent it.
Since 1989, I have had over 500 puzzles published for The Daily Telegraph and have also contributed enigmas to New Scientist, The Sunday Times, Reader's Digest, Brain Games (USA), and The Sunday Telegraph. My book Challenging Logic Puzzles Mensa has sold over 40,000 copies and, in 2004, Brain Busters occupied No. 1 spot on amazon.com's maths and logic puzzle list for over a year. That same year, I was puzzle consultant for BBC4 Mind Games.
In 1984, I obtained a Master of Science degree in theoretical physics and published papers on quantum mechanics in J. Phys. A. I am currently working on a mechanical model of the hydrogen atom, a program that was abandoned by physicists in the 1920s and which subsequently led to a probabilistic physics which in my view is flawed.
I have written comedy sketches for BBC TV (Alas Smith and Jones, Little and Large) and ITV (Beadle's Hotshots). Several of the short films that I have written, edited, and directed have won awards at film festivals. In 1998, future Harry Potter director David Yates was a consultant on my film Horace and Doris, drinking Camomile tea at my house, and chatting animatedly about film making as we walked around my proposed set locations.
I am currently doing a PhD at Brunel University, UK, in Shakespeare Studies, examining the evidence for Shakespeare being unavailable to write certain plays and, in 2011, my paper "The Virginia Company and The Tempest" was published in J. Drama Studies.
When I was a child my parents took no interest at all in my school successes (which were few) or failures (which were many). Consequently, I found what interested me by trial and error, without any judgement imposed by outsiders. While projects have occupied the center of my life I am also a nice guy and will always try to help someone if I can. For me, beauty is kindness.
My inspirational people are as follows:
Music: Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix, Handel
Physics: Albert Einstein
Philosophy: Immanuel Kant, Sir Francis Bacon, Noam Chomsky
Sport: Muhammed Ali
Comedy: John Cleese, Peter Kay, Rowan Atkinson, Peter Cook
