Eccentric puzzle master Henry Hook likes to tease, torment and torture. Before people like Hook and Will Shortz came along, the crossword puzzle, which was created in 1913, was an academic thing, far from being the pun-happy, pop culture paradise it is today. In his 2002 New Yorker article, “The Riddler,” Burkhard Bilger describes Hook’s unorthodox puzzle-creating routine:

“He lives and works in Brooklyn now, not far from Prospect Park, in a small wooden house so barricaded to guests that he barely lets the cable man in. ‘I’m the guy that inspired the phrase ‘Doesn’t play well with others,’’ he says. On most days, he wakes up by seven, does a word search to get his eyes focussed, and then spends the day shuttling between his crossword grids, his reference books, and the television. More and more crossword constructors are relying on computer programs and data bases of common clues. Hook uses only a pencil (‘A computer looks really stupid tucked behind your ear’), yet he has been known to come up with twenty-four crosswords and write more than fifteen hundred clues in three days. In addition to constructing a crossword for the Sunday BostonGlobe every other week, he writes two puzzle books a year for Random House and hundreds of puzzles that are syndicated for smaller publications.

Then again, there is very little to distract him. Once a week, Hook used to get dressed up, walk to a karaoke bar several blocks away, and belt out a few Sinatra or Elvis tunes. But, he says, he got bored with the same old crowd, and he gave up his membership in the National Puzzlers’ League long ago—’logophilia in the extreme.’ He says he dreams of being a former crossword constructor, but it’s not clear what else he would do.”