US Treasury's Yellen reveals Candy Crush obsession on NPR quiz show
Entertainment
The game is regularly played by millions of people on their daily commutes
CHICAGO (Reuters) - US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will come clean this weekend about her Candy Crush obsession, revealing to National Public Radio's "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" news quiz show that she plays the mobile phone game daily.
In a live-audience taping of the nationally syndicated show that airs on Saturday, Yellen said in Chicago it all started with a Blackberry device.
"They had a game called Brick Breaker and I had never used my phone to play games, but I started becoming addicted to Brick Breaker on my Blackberry," she said.
A biographer writing a book about Yellen suggested that she try Candy Crush Saga, the mobile phone game in which players try to line up matching candy pieces on a matrix to make them disappear and score points.
Yellen said she replied, "Candy Crush? I'm not playing a game like Candy Crush. I play Brick Breaker!"
But she added she started playing Candy Crush Saga regularly, and announced that she had just hit a level above 6,100 on Thursday morning.
The game is regularly played by millions of people on their daily commutes. Its maker, King, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, in September announced that it had reached a milestone of $20 billion in revenues since Candy Crush Saga launched in 2012.
The game is free but allows players to spend money to improve performance or watch ads to gain moves.
The Treasury Secretary was participating as a guest on the show's "Not My Job" segment, where prominent public figures and entertainers are asked irreverent questions that don't pertain to their field of work.
Yellen also said that she is a daily player of the Wordle five-letter word game and revealed her starter word: "raise." She said that an automated feature of the game had suggested she switch to "trace" as the first guess.
"I'm not changing," she said.
Yellen was in Chicago to talk up US economic resilience and the role Joe Biden's economic investment policies played in avoiding recession and bringing down inflation.
After a day of repeating the argument that inflation is fading and Americans are better off as incomes rise, Yellen looked to be in for easy treatment with an audience of mostly liberal public radio donors. But instead she got more tough questions from the quiz show's host, Peter Sagal.
"Inflation - Was that you?" Sagal asked.
"Not my fault!" Yellen replied. "That's the Fed's job."
