Hints: He’s invented thousands of puzzles for computer games and magazines. He’s helped teachers across the country integrate puzzles into math education. He’s written two books: Inversions and The NewMedia Puzzle Workout.

If you answered puzzlemaster Scott Kim, you’re correct! 

(Come on, we just had to.)

For the 51-year-old brainiac of El Granada, Calif., creating puzzles that tease, boggle and stump the brain is a way of life. Of course, these aren’t your childhood jigsaws. 

Some of his more recent projects include daily puzzles you can download onto your cell phone, an annual brainteaser-a-day calendar and Tetris-inspired Web games. He has an extensive compilation of visual and mathematical puzzles for all audiences, ranging from zip-through-it easy to forehead-scratching, hair-pulling difficult.   

“Puzzles exercise your brain and open your mind to new ways of thinking,” Kim says. “Creating puzzles is an art, like creating songs, movies or poetry.”

Kim’s passion for puzzles was sparked in grade school, when he would sit in the library reading puzzle books. When he got older, he began submitting puzzles to be featured in Martin Gardner’s popular column “Mathematical Games” in Scientific American. Gardner was impressed by Kim’s work, which helped give him the confidence to turn his hobby into something more.

Kim attended Stanford University, where he received his bachelor’s degree in music and a Ph.D. in computers and graphic design. In the ‘90s, he started writing an occasional “Boggler” puzzle for Discover magazine and eventually became the publication’s exclusive puzzle columnist.

The wheels in Kim’s brain are constantly spinning with ideas. He says that inspiration for puzzles can pop up “anywhere and everywhere,” such as in books or in daily conversations. On his Web site, Kim writes that his favorite definition of the word “puzzle” came out of a conversation with puzzle collector Stan Isaacs: 1) A puzzle is fun and 2) It has a right answer. Other than that, there are no boundaries.

“It’s important to think about how to engage and sustain the player’s interest throughout the process of solving the puzzle,” Kim says.

Today, Kim lives with his wife Amy Jo, an expert on social games such as Sim City, and his two children, Gabriel, 8, and Lila, 6 months. One of his goals is to introduce children to mathematical puzzles, sometimes by visiting elementary school classes as “the puzzle guy.” He might teach them how create their own mazes or play the magnetic version of Sudoku. 

“I want to share my love of math and puzzles,” Kim says. “It makes me very sad when kids don’t have that.”

Kim helps teachers integrate puzzles into math education by speaking at conferences and developing resources.

A man of many talents, Kim is also considered to be a world master in ambigrams, words designed so they can be read in more than one way, such as upside-down. In 1981, he wrote a book dedicated to ambigrams called Inversions, which Gardner called “one of the most astonishing and delightful books ever printed.”