Dr. Erich Friedman is an Associate Professor of Mathematics, and formerly the chair of the Math and Computer Science Department, at Stetson University in Florida. As an undergraduate, he discovered the first non-group cwatset, which was then named after him. He can also be credited with the Friedman numbers.

When he's not designing new brain-twisting mathematical concepts, he's designing brain-twisters of another sort. His website, which receives several thousand visitors monthly, contains dastardly visual logic puzzles and math challenges. Since 1999, he's been a regular contributor to the U.S. Puzzle Championships.

Dr. Friedman recently spoke with Puzzle Monster about the USPC, his love of puzzles, and why we're not likely to see an online crossword on his site anytime soon.

Puzzle Monster: You have a PhD from Cornell University. You've published serious mathematical papers such as "Pascal's Triangle and the Boltzmann Distribution." There are sets of numbers with your name on them. Why spend so much time on puzzles?

Dr. Erich Friedman: Because they're fun! Sure, I have a day job - I teach and do mathematical research. But one has to relax somehow. I'm lucky that the same skills that help me to be a good mathematician (creativity, pattern matching, problem solving) are useful in solving puzzles.

PM: What got you interested in puzzles in the first place?

EF: Like everybody else who grew up in the 70's, I was hooked by the Rubik's Cube. A friend and I would spend all our time on the bus to and from school working on it. We finally managed to solve it, using our own algorithm, and I can still do it in 75 seconds or so.

During that time I enjoyed various types of pencil puzzles involving logical thinking. And at some point I wondered how they made those sorts of puzzles, so I tried to make some myself. After enough practice, I was bold enough to contact GAMES magazine and they published some of them several years ago. That was the fulfillment of a dream for me! Since then, I've been too busy with other things to have my puzzles published.

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