Knowing well how NYT "operates" I don't believe this story, sorry. Surely this is about some sort of de-escalation or weird deal with them, but I don't buy the motivation about staying pseudonymous. It literally takes less than a minute of browsing Wikipedia to find his full name. And I just assume more people have access to Wikipedia than to NYT.
Currently if you google his real name SSC is not even on the first page of results. If the NYT publishes his name in an article about SSC it will be the top result.
Also I am not sure what you mean about Wikipedia - I don't see a current article about him (there was an old one with a wrong name but it was marked for deletion).
