Matching Minds with Sondheim: The Puzzles and Games of a Broadway Legend

Game designer Joseph (Seltzertopia) uncovers another side of Stephen Sondheim in this quirky exploration of the late composer’s lifelong fascination with puzzles and games. The book is divided into two parts: the first analyzes Sondheim’s relationship with games, highlighting his favorites (parlor games, video games, treasure hunts, board games, crosswords, and jigsaw puzzles). Joseph credits Sondheim with being among the first American popularizers of British cryptic crosswords (in which each clue is a puzzle in itself), and describes his development of a new version of the Murder Game, a classic parlor game. It involved, among other changes, a new element in which players study photo clues to determine the culprit, and it inspired Sondheim’s 1973 murder mystery, The Last of Sheila. The account’s second half mines Sondheim’s creative approach to games to highlight the “principles of good game and puzzle design,” such as maximizing engagement while minimizing the amount of time players spend waiting their turns, and offers tips for staging a Sondheim-inspired games night. This stands apart from other Sondheim biographies in celebrating his sense of fun and how it informed his creative process, and readers will delight in the amusing anecdotes supplied by friends and collaborators (including of an 86-year-old Sondheim crawling through tunnels in an escape room). It’s a fresh peek into the mind of a celebrated American artist. (Sept.)