Stefano Bartezzaghi (Milan, 1962) comes from a historic family of enigmatologists – his father Piero was a famous crossword creator – and began writing rebus puzzles in 1971. After graduating in Semiotics at DAMS under Umberto Eco, he has been writing the wordplay column La posta in gioco for Tuttolibri (La Stampa) since 1987 and regularly collaborates with La Repubblica, where he curates the daily column Lessico e nuvole. For the weekly magazine L'Espresso, he writes the linguistic criticism column Come dire. Associate Professor of Semiotics of Creativity at IULM University in Milan, since the 1990s he has published and edited various books on wordplay and the mechanics of language. Among his most recent publications are Chi vince non sa cosa si perde (Bompiani, 2024), Le parole fanno il solletico (with Daniel Pennac, Salani, 2025), and a diptych of game-books co-authored with Pier Mauro Tamburini, consisting of Bozze non corrette (Mondadori, 2025) and L'ultimo giro di bozze (Mondadori, 2026).