Who Is Word-Buff?

To tell you the truth, I was originally going to keep my identity secret.

Well, I guess 'private' is more accurate than 'secret', since it's not like I've done any jail-time or anything. I just like the fact that when I Google my own name (come on, we've all done it), all that comes up is a bloke who makes outdoor fishing rods (as if there were some other kind), a Facebook page of a dude who obviously has way more fun than I do, and some guy who makes a living taking really weird photos.

More and more often, though, I receive emails asking me who the heck I am. And since I myself like to read the About Me pages of sites I find interesting, I decided it was only fair I come clean. So here I am...

Derek McKenzie, aka Word-Buff, just as I'm about to get my website off the ground. Well... one more wine won't hurt.

But then I wondered what I should talk to you about? I mean, I don't want to bore you with a full biography. To keep it interesting, I'd have to make stuff up. So I decided to skip the CV, ex-girlfriends, and cute baby-snaps, and just tell you a little bit about...

My Secret Trunk

If my trunk could talk, it would tell you about all the horrible places I've forced it to stay - in damp, smelly basements, under cramped beds, behind filthy cupboards, in dusty attics, and even in the odd car boot. But wherever I am, the trunk is there too. Somewhere. This morning I located it under our house. I knew it would be there somewhere. It always is.

The trunk started its journey with me when I was seven years old. It is now the sole custodian of my childhood, containing just about everything that I've preserved from my early school years between about seven and thirteen years of age.

Would you like to take a peek inside?

Well... Ok. But I'm not going to show you everything. Then I wouldn't be able to call it my secret trunk any more, would I? What I will show you, though, are two small things that you might appreciate...

The first of these is a bunch of faded, hand-written papers crammed into a rusty black folder. I found it squashed between my grade six report card and a history assignment I had cut into the shape of a ziggurat, no doubt to compensate for the lack of content.

This was well and truly before the days of personal computers, so the entire process was manual. But it was very satisfying. As I've said elsewhere on these pages, part of this effort was driven by a competition between a classmate and myself to see who could solve the local newspaper crossword in the shortest time. I was planning to come back from the summer break as the fastest crossword solver in the world.

So you can imagine my disappointment when school resumed and I sought out my rival, only to find that tragedy had struck. You see, in the intervening months, my very good friend had moved on...

Naturally, I too had to win peer respect by mastering the Cube, and my home-made dictionary was relegated to my secret trunk, where it wouldn't see the light of day for many years.

Yet, however great the applause as I smashed through the 2-minute barrier, the Rubik's Cube was destined to be a passing fad. And, as I know you will understand, it was only a matter of time before my passion for word games would return to the fore.

But this time, it wasn't crosswords...

Well, maybe that's not exactly what it says - but something like that ;-)