Oliver Roeder

I’m a journalist at the Financial Times, based in New York.

I lead the paper’s US data journalism desk and write for FT Weekend Magazine.

Previously I was a Nieman fellow at Harvard and a senior writer at FiveThirtyEight.

Long pieces

Notes from underground; redefining the second; a deep-space rescue mission; a geometric battle in the mountains; secretive computer horseracing syndicates; elite chess in wartime; a family building the world’s tallest flagpole; the legal fight over prediction markets.

Other features

Lunch with Hans Niemann; the problem with polling; crossword gods in Connecticut; lost and afraid in the metaverse; underground sound in a dying planet.

Books

Humans vs machines and the importance of games (a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice); a set of mathematical puzzles.

Some columns

Backgammon’s brain for sale; artificial fantasy football; the Premier League goal boom; a village filled with chatbots; on political prognostication; a new poker boom.

Some older pieces

Crossword plagiarism; the darkest town in America; finding God on a game show; playing chess with Magnus Carlsen; millions of Russian troll tweets; the man who solved Jeopardy!; how to win a nuclear standoff; an art cataloguer’s crusade; chess kings and billionaires.

New York Times crosswords

A pair of Thursdays.