Puzzle master Will Shortz pieces together his recovery from a stroke

One Sunday night in February, Will Shortz was at his desk at home in Pleasantville, New York, when he leaned to his left and realized he couldn’t sit back up straight.

One Sunday night in February, Will Shortz was at his desk at home in Pleasantville, New York, when he leaned to his left and realized he couldn’t sit back up straight. “I knew immediately I had had a stroke,” he told CNN. The stroke was on the right side of his brain, leaving the left side of his body “completely incapacitated” and causing his speech to be slurred, said Shortz, 72. It didn’t affect his ability to solve and make puzzles, he said – a gift for the millions of people who enjoy his work as the crossword editor of the New York Times and the puzzlemaster of NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday,” roles he’s held for decades. With a right-brain injury, “his ability to say the right words, write and gesture, as well as understand those things, are not likely to be affected,” said Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon and CNN’s chief medical correspondent. But the opposite side of the body is affected, which left Shortz with the weakness on his left side. Strokes are caused when a blood clot blocks blood flow to the brain or, less frequently, when a blood vessel ruptures and causes bleeding in the brain. Almost 800,000 people in the United States are estimated to have a stroke each year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than 165,000 die from stroke, making it one of the country’s leading causes of death.