NPR's text adventurer revealed!

Last week we linked to a post on Curmudgeon Gamer about spotting an obscure text adventure reference during an NPR report. NPR's science correspondant,
David Kestenbaum, said, "Sisk admits that he lives in a complicated part of the city, a maze of twisty little roads, all alike." We pondered how the mention got in there, unsure of its pervasiveness outside
nerd gamer circles. The culprit has voluntarily unmasked himself over at Curmudgeon Gamer and he's none other than... David Kestenbaum!

Hey there,

[Someone at NPR] pointed out your post about the Colossal Cave line in the story about online driving directions. I wish the story were that some menacing troll on the copy desk had slipped the line it, but it was completely my idea. (We don't actually have a copy desk.) It occurred to me while I was interviewing Jacob Sisk for the first part of the story when he mentioned how tangled the roads were and how everyone got lost. It seemed a perfect line to drop in, since this was about mazes and computers. I don't think I told my editor. It just sailed on through...

[I got] the old Infocom game Deadline last week, which I had played as a kid but never completed. It's pretty great. I love how spare the whole thing is. You end up creating these great mental images in your head. A lot like radio actually...

dk

After a little digging, it's really no surprise.
Kestenbaum has a PhD in particle physics, so he's a purebred nerd gamer. David, in Deadline,
make sure to "EXAMINE LADDER."

[Thanks, Matt]