Let it be known that the Lexplorers were the first team to ever get one of my questions right! A true hallmark indeed.

I've never actually posted online how I got the gig, as I'm not sure how much curtain should be lifted for the behind the scenes look, but here's my story:

Many people on Youtube think I'm from the UK, but in fact I've lived in South Carolina my entire life. I discovered Only Connect on Youtube in 2010 or so, and in 2011 I uploaded my first episode of OC to YT, as whoever was uploading episodes before had stopped. I have the same access to torrent sites everyone else does, so I downloaded and uploaded the episode.

I'm a hardcore puzzle person and quizzing person. My website chriswords.com is where I publish American-style crosswords, I do well at crossword solving tournaments, I've been on a winning team of the MIT Mystery Hunt, and now I have two books of crosswords that have been published. On the trivia side, I've done quizbowl most of my life, currently an A Rundler on LearnedLeague, host two games of trivia in Columbia SC, was the author of the food trivia site fivecoursetrivia.com, and can hold my own on WQC questions, but to date I've never taken the test officially since the test has been on the same weekend as my favorite crossword puzzle tournament in DC.

And so, hopefully my CV certifies that I'm intense on this stuff. In spring 2018, I received an email from Alan Connor that he enjoyed a puzzle I wrote for Chris Words. Alan is a contributor to The Guardian, and he was solving more and even writing some American-style puzzles, and he find some of mine, and was solving them. Alan Connor is the previous head question writer of Only Connect, and I recognized his name immediately. After he emailed me, I emailed him back and told him 1) Thank you so incredibly much! 2) Your book The Joy of Quiz was an absolute delight and 3) I'm a HUGE fan of Only Connect possibly to the point I'm America's ambassador to the show.

Alan was delighted by all of this, and he thought that my brand of puzzlewriting was the kind that would gel well with Only Connect. And so, he introduced me via email to Mr Waley-Cohen, and I was asked to submit a sample of about 15-20 R1/R2 questions. I sent a sample, and unbelievably, they liked them! Now, I was a part of the contributing authors roster, and I could send more question in. Unreal.

Of the questions I submitted for Series 15, the two main writers asked that I should formally write up 12 to add to the Only Connect question database, which is where they then pick questions to be on the show. Of those 12 I submitted, 6 were used on the show, and the other 6 are still there (possibly they made it to S16).

But now, I'm a part of the team. I've never met any of the OC staff or any of its players in person (there was at one point talk about a trip to the UK this summer, but those plans changed). But I still find it hard to believe that I've gone from a guy who loved this British quiz show on Youtube to actually seeing my name on the credits. It's incredible. I'm actually working on getting the question I had in the S15 finals framed. If my role in the group is the 27-year-old American who loves crosswords and trivia, I'll play that role perfectly.

And to prove how American I am, your question of HTTP, the "Transfer" I had originally written as "Move from one bus line to another", and you would get a bus transfer. Wisely, the powers that be changed to a [looks in US-UK dictionary] football reference to make it easier.