Meet the crossword puzzle maker, Phssthpok

As a regular treat, every few months or so for nearly 30 years, the Financial Times has featured a puzzle by Phssthpok, whose name comes from a novel called Protector. Adam Sanitt has also set himself up for The Times and it's time we met that ferryman.

Hello Phssthpok. When did you get the crossword bug? I've spent many happy hours in the back of a conference room with a newspaper balanced on my lap figuring out how to solve crossword puzzles. It took many years for me to become a proficient solver.

I suggested to the editor of the college newspaper that we start a cryptic crossword and he kindly took a chance and gave me a weekly slot. Last time I checked, it still worked.

Did you choose your nickname despite or because of its ugliness? May I take this opportunity to apologize for inflicting my nickname on generations of editors and solvers?

I appreciate that he has caused consternation – not to mention fury – over the years. In my defense, I was already using Phssthpok as a pseudonym before the crosswords.

In the early 1980s, as a teenager, I was involved with some of the forerunners of the internet : Prestel, Janet and other networks. It was considered an advantage to have a name online that – if you only saw it fleetingly, as an entry on a rapidly scrolling access log, for example – would be extremely difficult to remember and spell accurately. For a Larry Niven fan, Phssthpok seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

So the unpronounceability and awkward spelling aren't accidents. When I first became a smuggler, it seemed overkill to choose a different alias.

While we're at it, can you suggest a suitable Larry Niven story for a newcomer? Recommendation would be Ringworld and its sequels: many of its ideas have passed into science fiction folklore and influenced, for example, Iain M Banks' Culture novels.

Thank you. What do you do for a living? My day job is a lawyer at Norton Rose Fulbright, a city law firm, where I'm fortunate to have a varied role that includes AI and other innovations.

I am very easily distracted, however, and have a few other interests - hope no one from work is reading this . Outside of compiling, I produce scholarly work in mathematics and related fields.

And my first novel was published this year. The Transfer Problem is a thriller speculation, with no crossword puzzles but hopefully enough twists and turns to satisfy puzzle lovers. For this, I adopted another ps...