Puzzles of All Stripes

With great anticipation, we are pleased to host the return of Derrick Niederman, a Charleston-based C of C faculty member and the longest-running NYT crossword puzzle contributor. This time, join us to investigate puzzledom further—from words to numbers, logical to visual. Bring puzzles and brain teasers out of their normal habitats and into our waking world, and stretch your brain muscles with an evening that will leave you paying closer attention to well-known challenges and practicing new ones.

Purchase Tickets HERE!
About Derrick Niederman

Derrick Niederman has been making crossword puzzles since 1981, when he was completing his Ph.D. in mathematics at M.I.T. He went on to pursue a career in the investment industry, where he began as a fixed-income analyst and ended as a financial writer and columnist. Niederman returned to mathematics in 2011 when he moved to South Carolina and joined the mathematics faculty at the College of Charleston. By that time he had published more than 50 crosswords of various sizes and stripes, including 20+ for the Sunday New York Times. Niederman is also the author of a dozen books, on topics ranging from investments to quantitative reasoning and, of course, to puzzles. He created the word game PathWords and the geometric puzzle 36 Cube for ThinkFun (now Ravensburger) and in 2025 launched his own game company, Wordsmith Games, whose flagship game is called Tosswords. Elsewhere in business pursuits, he has long been a board member of a family-owned manufacturing company in Connecticut, and earlier this year was named Chairman. When away from his desk, he is a duplicate bridge enthusiast and a tournament-caliber squash player, with several national age group doubles titles and one national singles title to his credit.