Scott Kim
Scott Kim is an American puzzle and computer game designer, artist, and author. He started writing an occasional "Boggler" column for Discover magazine in 1990, and became an exclusive columnist in 1999, and created hundreds of other puzzles for magazines such as Scientific American and Games, as well as thousands of puzzles for computer games.
Kim was born in 1955 in Washington D.C. and grew up in Rolling Hills Estates, California. He had an early interest in mathematics, education, and art, and attended Stanford University, receiving a BA in music, and a self-designed PhD in Computers and Graphic Design under Donald Knuth. In 1981, he created a book called Inversions, words that can be read in more than one way. His first puzzles appeared in Scientific American in Martin Gardner's "Games" column.
He is considered to be one of the two world masters of the art of ambigrams, along with John Langdon, the artist who created ambigrams for the CD and bestselling book Angels & Demons by Dan Brown. Isaac Asimov called Kim "the Escher of the alphabet".
Kim is a regular speaker on puzzle design, such as at the International Game Developers Conference and Casual Games Conference. His wife Amy Jo Kim is the author of Community Building on the Web.
He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife Amy Jo Kim, son Gabriel and daughter Lila Rose.
Works
- Inversions, 1981, Byte Books, ISBN 1-55953-280-7, a book of 60 original ambigrams
- "Letterforms & Illusion", 1989, W. H. Freeman & Co., created with Robin Samelson, accompanies the book, Inversions.
- Heaven and Earth, Buena Vista / Disney (computer game)
- Obsidian, SegaSoft (computer game)
- MetaSquares, 1996 (computer game, created with Kai Krause, Phil Clevenger, and Ian Gilman)
- The Next Tetris, Hasbro Interactive, PlayStation
- Railroad Rush Hour, Binary Arts (toy)
- Charlie Blast's Territory (Nintendo 64 game)
- The NewMedia Puzzle Workout - collection of Kim's magazine puzzles
- Scott Kim's Puzzle Box (monthly Shockwave puzzles at JuniorNet.com)
- Brainteasers, Mind Benders, Games, Word Searches, Puzzlers, Mazes & More Calendar 2007, Workman Publishing Company, ISBN 0-7611-4079-4
Contributed works
- Harry Abrams. Escher Interactive (computer game)
- Elonka Dunin, The Mammoth Book of Secret Code Puzzles, 2006, Constable & Robinson, ISBN 0-78671-726-2
References
- Scott Kim: Puzzlemaster - Kim's website
- Dan Burstein, Secrets of Angels & Demons, 2004, CDS Books. ISBN 1-59315-140-3
- Discover magazine "Boggler" column. (archived copies, 1999-2002)
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