Thanks for the story! I share your relative disinterest in extended small talk, and also your skepticism for high-functioning AS as a scalar diagnosis of permanent personality type, rather than as a current description of a vector of modifiable skill levels. I came in at a 23 on the Wired poll, and I think I would have come in about 6 points higher if I'd taken the quiz when I was, say, 12 years old.

I have often had trouble interacting with and bonding with peers for some of the reasons listed in the article, but my experience of overcoming the difficulties has not been one of finding logical workarounds, but of practicing social skills and getting constructive feedback on them until they came to feel more natural. Likewise, someone who is generally intelligent but "bad at math" might not be significantly different in their capacity to learn math from a "math prodigy;" they might just be stuck in a negative feedback loop.