Professor Shasha is a prolific author, researcher, tango dancer, climber, and public speaker.
[3] He has written six books of puzzles, five of which center on the work of a mathematical detective by the name of Jacob Ecco,[4] a biography about great computer scientists (coauthored by freelance journalist Cathy Lazere), and technical books relating to his various areas of research.
In his non-academic writings, perhaps his greatest invention is the notion of omniheuristics, a kind of super-heuristics concerned with the ability to solve any and all manner of puzzles, conundrums, enigmas, and dilemmas.
Owing their decidedly curious character, he has given particular note to puzzles that start off easy, but have apparently innocent variants that are particularly perplexing; he calls them 'upstarts'.
[5] Professor Shasha has written monthly puzzle columns for Communications of the ACM, Scientific American, and Dr. Dobb's Journal.