Barry Joseph: Welcome to this special episode of Matching Minds with Sondheim, the podcast. In this episode, you will join us at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, where on September 12th, I launched my book. This session emphasizes the role of research institutions in the development of the project. Listen along as the audience played interactive games inspired by Sondheim, and heard from surprise guest speakers including Richard Maltby Jr., the famed director, producer, lyricist, and screenwriter, and Daria Begley, a writer for the Sondheim Society. Please note this has been edited to make sense as an audio only podcast.

So for example, when Daria says there were about 10 of these, please picture in your mind a collection of toy dinosaur T-Rex. And don't worry, we will not spoil the answer to The Murder Game. When we get to that moment, you'll hear a whoosh sound where I make the edit to signal we've jumped forward in time.

So enjoy. And if you want to check out my other presentations live, visit the listings at MatchingMindswithSondheim.com. I'm doing different presentations at different locations and with different surprise guests. I hope to see you there. And finally, because the theme song to this podcast is already within the presentation itself, we're gonna jump right in. Are you ready? Let's go.

Adam Wassilchalk: Good evening everyone. Welcome to the New York Public Library for Performing Arts. My name is, yeah, go for it. Yes.

My name is Adam Wassilchalk. I'm the theater programs and outreach coordinator for the library. And we're so excited to have Barry Joseph here to talk about his new book, Matching Minds with Sondheim: the Puzzles and Games of the Broadway Legend. The event tonight caps off a weak of program we've had at the library about Sondheim's obsession with puzzles and games.

On Monday, Barry led a workshop on how to design treasure hunts like Stephen Sondheim. And on Wednesday, Barry led a workshop on how to hold a games night like Stephen Sondheim, both of which happened in our new Harvey Fierstein Theater Lab. I will also let all of you in on a little secret here tonight.

The official publication date of Barry's book is October 2nd, but through a series of miracles performed by Barry, the Library, and Bloomsbury Publishing, we have copies of his book here tonight on sale. So if you want to see and read the book that inspired all the events that happened this week, I highly encourage you to go pick up a copy at our book sales table after the event tonight in the lobby.

Barry himself will also be out there to sign the books and things like that and come and chat with everybody. So, without further ado, I would love to welcome the man himself, Barry Joseph, to the stage for the program tonight.

Barry Joseph: Good evening. Welcome to Matching Minds with Sondheim. First, can I just get the obvious question outta the way?

Yes, that's Steven Sondheim: lyricist, composer, to many one of the greatest creative minds of the last century. To others just God. And... game designer. And... puzzle constructor. And... jigsaw gifter and escape room influencer and so much more. The Sondheim most of us know and revere from his work in musical theater produced what I would argue is work that's as equally compelling and beguiling in the space of puzzles and games over his entire life.

But before we can get into that, I need to thank some people. I need to thank everyone who arranged like Adam and all of his colleagues to be here with you all week, as he mentioned. And here tonight with all of you, not just Adam, but also Doug and Kelsey and Jade and all of you in the back, and everyone I met in the last hour who's here in the space and outside supporting this event.

Thank you all so much. Please give it up for them. And is Ruth here? Is Ruth. Where's Ruth? I need not to thank, I need to apologize. Ruth, there you are. Ruth. I'm so sorry. I used to work for Ruth at the American Museum of Natural History and we're gonna talk more about that in a little bit. Not about Ruth, but about the American Museum of Natural History.

Ruth, I'm so sorry. I, I, I used, You used to tell me to keep it all simple. I, I'm getting all wrong. I have so much to do tonight.

Ruth Cohen: Get back on stage!

Barry Joseph: Get on the stage. Okay, I'll get on the stage. Thank you. Thank you. But before I do, I need your help. I have so much I wanna do with you all tonight. I need your help. So please don't clap too much.

And don't laugh too much. We won't have enough time. But I do need some volunteers because I need someone to time a few sections. So put up your hand. I need one volunteer. You'll stay in your seat. I'll need you to time five minutes. You have to be comfortable getting to your phone, going to the timer. I see, I see a hand over here.

Alright. Excellent. Uh, I think I've met you before. What's your name?

Damien: Damien.

Barry Joseph: Damien, thank you. So Damien, here's what I need you to do. There's gonna be times where I'm gonna ask you to time five minutes. And when you get to zero, what I need you to do, just put up your hand, go ahead and say, see it. Put up your arm.

Really visible. And what everyone else in this row is gonna do is when the person to your left puts up their arm, put it up as well. And don't put your arm down until the last person does it. So let's try it out. You got it. When the person to your left puts up their arm, put it up as well. And don't put it down until he's done.

So just count down from three. Right now just do three, three seconds

Beautiful. Give 'em a round of applause. That was excellent. Thank you. I'll give you a warning. Give you a warning when we're gonna be doing it. So don't worry about that. All right. Now for a sad moment. There's gonna be two sad moments tonight.

Maybe one sad and one touching, but we have to do this one first 'cause I need to shine a spotlight on those who are no longer with us. This project started just over three years ago. Many people who played an instrumental role are no longer with us here for the outcome of the book. And one who most recently passed away is Alexander Bernstein, who shared his memories with me and opened access to the playful connections between his father Leonard and Steven Sondheim.

Second is Paul Salsini, who was the founding editor of the Sondheim Review, who opened doors for me previously unimagined at the start of this project, and who Inconceivably to me at the time asked me to blurb his book Sondheim and Me three years ago when I just started my research. And that led to an early mention of my book in the New York Times before I even had a publisher, before I even had an agent.

And trust me, that helped. Stephen M. Silverman, who passed away mere months before the publication of his book on Sondheim: Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy, and who for a brief time was part of the network of Sondheim writers from which I drew both sustenance and courage. Of course, Steven Sohdheim himself, whom I never had the chance to meet, but whom I got to imagine every day during the three year process of writing my book.

Okay, now for a happy note. Who here follows me on social media? Hands up and cheer as I can't see you 'cause the lights. Thank you. I could not have been here without you, and you all know why. If you wanna know more, ask me during the Q and A. And I'm so delighted now to thank all of you for coming out on a Friday night to the New York Public Library to hear an evening about Steven Sondheim and his puzzles and his games, and thank you for joining me in celebrating the release of the book tonight.

You can clap if you want.

Finally, I would also like to thank the over 100 people who spoke with me for the book, and I'll share a few of their voices with you now along with some images from the book, and you'll hear along with it, the original theme song to my podcast for the book composed by Colm Molloy and sung by Ann Morrison.

George Lee Andrews: We were there.

Marty Morris Lee: Oh, it's so much fun.

Etai Benson: There's no better way to represent his brilliance than through puzzles.

Colm Molloy: I feel like he was probably more obsessed with puzzles than musicals. Maybe that's heresy.

Wil Shortz: He was a brilliant puzzle solver and a great mind.

George Lee Andrews: It was quite amazing when you walked into his apartment, because it was full of games and puzzles.

Michael Mitnick: When Sondheim started to build the cryptic crosswords for New York Magazine, his treasure hunts were legendary.

George Lee Andrews: Everybody was just running around screaming and laughing and, and having that,

Erin Ortman: It's almost ridiculous to be like, yeah, I went on a scavenger hunt created by Stephen Sondheim.

Michael Counts: You know, and in some ways you could almost consider him like the sort of inventor of the, the very form of escape rooms or puzzles because he loved

Taylor Myers: Stephen Sondheim blurred out when the final exit door opened.

But I wanna stay

Marty Morris Lee: How cool that we're sitting here trying to figure this game out again?

Richard Maltby: I, I have to say, I'm so grateful to be invited to, to participate in this. I can't tell you. It's just such a gift. You know, and it's, he's here, you know, he's here

Ann Morrison : Matching Minds with Sondheim. Tell a friend and quiz him.

Test him on his anagram. He's pure hedonism. His songs and his shows. Mary Flynn. Mama Rose. Everybody already knows they're superbly designed, but where would we be without a puzzle to bring us glee? Even someone in a tree would believe we need Steve and his mind...

Barry Joseph: Moments of clarity. Moments of connection. That is what I enjoy so much about the works of Steven Sondheim. Moments of clarity, like the final moment at the end of act one in Sunday in the Park with George. Moments of connection, like the end of company where our main character, Bobby, finally sings what it means to be alive.

Moments in clarity and moments of connection are also the two themes I heard the most within the voices that you just heard. Just a handful among the 100 I spoke with for over 60 hours as part of the research for my book, Sondheim's friends, his colleagues, his loved ones. But in this case, I wasn't asking them about musical theater.

We were talking about Sondheim's games. Speaking of games, I was at a conference just a few weeks ago where I was introduced by educator, Michelle King, to a card game. It's designed to let players explore words in other language that English doesn't seem to capture just right. You can see this three on the screen we have, I'm not gonna try and pronounce them.

I'll just read the definition, uh, from Dutch, the feeling of anticipation and excitement before an event that was me just a few minutes ago, uh, from Tagalog. So overpowered by the cuteness of someone or something that you want to pinch them. I love that one. And then in Georgian, the feeling when you've over eaten past being full because the food was so delicious, which is me at home every night with the food that my wife makes.

What I would like to invite all of you to do is to find your own card. You get a card and you get a card, and you get a card. You all get a card. Look under your seat, there's a card stuck on the bottom. You'll have your own word and your own definition. When you look at it, decide, is that something that you can relate to?

Do you feel like it could be part of who you are or something you experience? If not, you'll have a moment to trade with someone else. But first, take a moment to look at your card.

Alright, now introduce your card to the person next to you. Whether it's someone you came with or a stranger. Tell 'em your name and then show your card. But if you don't like your card, see if they want to trade with you. Good luck.

Would anyone like to share their card? You can read the word if you want. You don't have to, but at least give us the definition really loud so everyone can hear.

She said she, it's parasocial how you feel about someone who you don't know but you connect with 'cause of their, they're fame. She said that's how she feels about Steven Heim. Thank you. Over here in the front row. I can give you the mic 'cause you're right here.

Audience: Saro sign. Having caution, wisdom, honesty, and self-control. Reasonable. Greek.

Barry Joseph: Maybe one more. And in the back please.

Real loud.

A person's heart, mind, and soul. Thank you. Already, we just started moments of connection. I wanted to start with something about words. 'cause tonight is specifically about recognizing the importance of words and those who protect them, research libraries. But before we do, I wanna share my card. This is the one that I got at that conference, and I invite you to keep your card if you like.

You can leave it, but you can keep it yours as I did mine. Now, when I first got it, I won't pronounce it, it's a Spanish word, a feeling of unease, instability, or unrest. And I thought, Ugh, I don't want that card. That sounds really, uh, unpleasant. Um, but then I realized I actually love to live in liminal spaces, in a place of becoming, I'm moving towards something towards the unknown without ever arriving.

And that's what I did for three years, researching this book. Yes, it is written. You can buy it outside tonight. But I hope the research for it never ends. That's why I have a podcast now. That's why I'm on Instagram. 'cause I'm still learning more and I'm still putting it out there. And as I continue to learn, I learn to better understand the mind of Stephen Sondheim.

And the research that I did is what I wanna focus on tonight, which I performed at over a half dozen libraries, usually remotely. And many are you're listed in your program . Tonight at a time when cultural institutions are being attacked at the federal level for daring to speak the truth tonight, I wanna dedicate this to them, for this small thing for my book. Much of it would not exist without them. So let's give a moment of thanks to the New York Public Library... and then let's look at some of the treasures I unearthed along the way. Watch for designed, moments of clarity, and watch for designed moments of connection. And because tonight is so special, we might just have some surprise guests join me on the stage. Are you ready? Yes. I think you can do better than that.

Are you ready? Yes. That's it. I love it. Alright, come with me. We're going down to Washington DC to the Library of Congress. Before this year, before they received the bequeath from the Sondheim Estate, Sondheim material appeared in at least 20 of their special collections. One of those collections was that of Leonard Bernstein. Within Bernstein's 400,000, this 400,000 item haystack, there was one pin, I saw it, a bespoke album created by Sondheim in 1968 for Sondheim's 50th birthday. Why did this album interest me? So, and what did it have to do with the game? I could spend the entire night answering that question. So forgive me for giving a highly abridged explanation.

And luckily you don't have to hear it from me. I have an unused video from a 1998 interview by PBS that might just help.

Stephen Spndheim: He was going to leave the Philharmonic and it was, there was much speculation as to who was gonna replace him. For Lenny's 50th birthday, I invented a great conductor hunt, and the first part was a game in which-- it's actually quite a, quite a good game.

It involves letters and, uh, moves and making words outta the letters by moving pieces. The point was you graduate from music school in the first game, uh, there were chance cards that would happen every now and then by the throw of the dice. And I thought instead of printing them out, you know, like you do in Monopoly, I would have Helen Coates read them. So I got Helen Coast to read it, her dry school teacher voice, all these things. I put it on a, on an ace tape. Uh uh, and so every time the the dye would require a, a, a card to be turned up, you just put it onto the next groove and find out what, whether you got a letter or lost a letter.

Interviewer: That is incredible.

Stephen Spndheim: Oh, oh, oh months, couple of months. But I, you know, I would rather invent games and invent crosser puzzles than write any songs, I can tell you. A good time inventing that.

Barry Joseph: So, in summary, in 1968, Sondheim designed not one, but a series of three bar board games for his friend, or Bernstein that together were called the Great Conductor Hunt.

The first game, the one we're gonna talk about was called Diploma.

Steven Sondheim mentioned someone named Helen Coates. So who was Helen Coates? Bernstein's childhood piano teacher who then became his personal secretary for the rest of her life. So if you wanna get to Lenny in the game, you first have to get through Helen- in real life and now also in the board game.

Sondheim's brief, witty jives that he wrote at his friend are hilarious. And if you go to the Library of Congress, you can listen to the recording of Helen reading them. Has anyone here ever done that before? No, I don't see any hands. Well, in that case, would you like to hear some now? Yes. All right. I sat down with Mark Eden Horowitz, who is the Library of Congress curator, responsible for Bernstein's collection and now Sondheim's, to listen to them together.

Let's listen to number track. Number 11.

Helen Coates: You called him Mr. Bernstein Really makes him sick to have his name pronounced that way. You don't say Einstein, do you? Your rivals call him maestro. Give this letter to the one on your left.

Mark Eden Horowitz: I can't tell you how many people still mispronounce Lenny's name to me.

Barry Joseph: If only could have sent them to Helen.

Mark Eden Horowitz: Well, it's funny. It's because of Sondheim that I've got it firmly in my mind. I'll have Bernstein play next on the Beckstein piano- so that whenever I am not sure I remember that lyric.

Barry Joseph: Let's listen to 23.

Helen Coates: Lenny feels it's a serious defect that you can't do the puzzles in the nation.

Zubin Mehta can, but of course he can do anything. Lenny insists upon another letter, give him this one.

Barry Joseph: I think those puzzles in the nation were cryptic crosswords at the time, which Leonard Bernstein and Steven Sondheim loved to do. So he's again, bringing into the game this biographical aspect of their relationship together and commemorating it.

Mark Eden Horowitz: And tweaking Lenny at the same time.

Barry Joseph: So it speaks a lot to the way they battled with each other.

Mark Eden Horowitz: I can just picture Lenny. The first time he played this, just bursting out laughing when he got to some of these clues or some of these recordings from Helen. He must have just busted a gut.

Barry Joseph: Ruth, do we have time for another one? Yes. Okay. One.

Alright, good. One more. Thanks Ruth.

And lastly, let's listen to number 27.

Helen Coates: Lenny was fascinated to hear that your hobbies included chiropractic and belly dancing, but he'd like to find out whether you can practice them simultaneously. To elucidate, send him a letter.

Mark Eden Horowitz: She cracks herself up there.

Barry Joseph: Yeah!

Steven Sondheim using board games for his friend to create moments of connection.

In 1965, Steven Sondheim had a friend, Phyllis Newman, who had a show that he went to see outta the city, hoping to come to Broadway, but it flopped and it never made it. After the show, he went backstage and he said to her, don't be depressed. What can I do for you? She said, you can throw me a party when I get back to New York and make it a games party.

Invent a game. And there, there it is. On the right, found in the Mugar library at Boston University. A six page letter from Stephen Sondheim to Herbert Ross, amongst many other things a director of movies, instructing Ross on how to run it himself. Ross, who had just a few years earlier asked Sondheim to adapt the game into what became a film.

Does anyone know the name of the film? The Last of Sheila? We obviously can't play it now. It was meant to be done in a house with rooms, maybe after some wine, or can we. In 1982, Sondheim was invited to be featured in a profile for Games magazine. I'm curious, any readers of Games magazine out here?

See a few hands. All right. Welcome. A reader since the start of its publication in 1977, he read every issue. And saved them. In fact, there they are in the middle, sold last year at the Doyle's Auction. Issues from 1977 up to the year his subscription ran out after he passed away. And along with his interview in that issue, in January, 1983, Sondheim offered to submit a puzzle and what he did is he adapted The Murder Game.

Would you like to play it? So we are going to imagine that all of us are number seven. I'll explain why we got number seven in a moment. Lights up please. It might help. Thank you. We are at Stephen Sondheim's house. We just had some cocktails. Maybe we played a different parlor game, maybe a, a version of charades.

And he has us all sit down now around a table and he gets out a deck of cards. There are 10 of us playing. And he randomly shuffles the cards. They're all, uh, the heart cards and he has everyone take one. And then when he, you get the number, he says, now take the envelope with that number. So we take number seven.

We don't know what to do with it yet, but that's all right. And we look around the room and we see all the other people we're with. Lee Remnick, Tony Perkins, Peter Schafer, these are all the people he named in Games magazine. All people he played with at the time. And when we get the envelope, he tells us to look inside. And he says, everyone's gonna get instructions.

It's gonna tell you a room to go to in my apartment. And what you need to do there is route around, it won't take you long, but there's a photo. Find that photo and get back to this room. This is the safe room where we are right now. We're in the safe room. But when you're not in the safe room, you might be killed. So we grab the photo, we look around, we're safe, we get back to the safe room. We made it. Congratulate ourselves. We made it back to the room.

But he says, your challenge now is not to identify just who the murderer is, but prove it indisputably. Which means that even those who were killed, even the person who's the murderer, can now also play. 'cause even though obviously the murderer knows who did it, how can everyone now prove it somehow?

That is correct. Congratulations.

What he figured out is something that Stephen Sondheim often did in his puzzles. First, figure out the pattern and then look for the exception to that. Now I saw a few hands up, hands go up before for Last of Sheila.

Lemme just see again. So we'll see who the Last of Sheila folks are. I won't give anything away if you haven't seen it, but you guys know that's also what happens in the movie. That's how it's both solved. The murder in the movie and how the people watching at home, like all of us can solve it as well.

Sondheim sets up a pattern. You have to find the pattern and then figure out what that exception is. Okay, so you've all now had an opportunity to simulate going through the game, both a version from Games magazine and hearing a little bit about how I pretended that we were actually in person in Stephen Sondheim's house in the late sixties and early seventies playing this game.

But would you like to hear now from someone who was actually there and actually played it? Yes. With that, I would love to welcome to the stage, Richard Malty Jr.

Richard is a Tony Award-winning lyric and director whose inventive musicals have delighted audiences for decades, and whose friendship with Steven Sondheim proves that sometimes the best plays happen around a game table. Richard, welcome. Come join me over here. And timers! Get ready timers! As soon as we both sit, hit five minutes. Remember everyone in that row do what the person on your left does.

Richard Maltby: Hello.

Barry Joseph: Richard. What was it like to watch this room be one collective consciousness that you got to do on your own 60 years ago?

Richard Maltby: Well, as you describe in your book, um, I did something really stupid. Um. I knew the premise of the, of the game: he had told me that, that you're gonna go and get cards and bring things back.

And I stewed for days over that and figured out what had had to happen. And I wrote it out. And as we went in to play the game, I handed him this card, telling him that I had figured out how, what the game was, thinking this was going to mean he's gonna think, isn't Richard smart? Actually it's insulting and ruins the game. And, uh, I wish I had done differently, but anyway, I did figure it out on the basis of just the rules.

Barry Joseph: But you, but you didn't spoil it at that point. You just told Steven Sondheim that you knew.

Richard Maltby: I just handed him the card and I, and I didn't spoil it, but I mean the rest of the game still played out.

And it was fun and I just said it was very satisfied and smug. 'cause I had figured it out.

Barry Joseph: I wrote in the book that, uh, Richard Malty, when he sat down at the beginning of the credits for last of Sheila before the credits ended, probably said, I figured it out.

Richard Maltby: Well, it's called The Last of Sheila. What is the last of Sheila? It's A. So you, I mean, if your mind is set that way, you know,

Barry Joseph: So when you think about Steven Sondheim, who was a colleague, who was a friend, and you think about your times playing with him, what did you get to know about him that people who weren't playing with him might not have known?

Richard Maltby: Well,

I, I, um, you, he, he introduced the cryptic puzzle to America to, and certainly to New York in the first issue of New York Magazine, which was in, uh, 68 se April, I think, of 68. He wrote this wonderful, uh, essay on solving cryptic, uh, clues.

Um, that was in that first issue. And I've got, you know, obsessed with it. And I did all the puzzles. He did one every week for a year, and then after a year, that was really too much. I mean, really one week was, that's a lifetime. Uh, and uh, so he then did it every three weeks and they invented the New York Magazine competition with Mary Ann Madden.

You remember those, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Um, and they were, they were equally delightful. And then I think he did that for a year or maybe two, maybe a year. Um, but he was going to rehearsal with, uh, Company which was a big deal for him, and he couldn't do the, he had to, so he announced that he was going to stop the puzzles, and I couldn't bear that the puzzles wouldn't appear in the magazine, so I asked if I could take over, uh, writing, making up the puzzles, which I did.

Barry Joseph: Richard, may, may I pause you for a moment. Had you ever created a cryptic crossword before?

Richard Maltby: I, I had never seen one before, but I did do, while he was, while he was doing the one a week, I, he, I did two just for the fun of it, and he did print them, so I kind of knew what, what I was doing sort of.

Um, and, uh, so then I did them for, I don't know, 20 years. I just kept doing them and, uh, and then, uh. Then I suddenly got very busy and I couldn't do it, so I dropped it. And, uh,

Barry Joseph: What show was it that you were busy with at the time?

Richard Maltby: Uh, Ain't Misbehaving.

Barry Joseph: Ain't Misbehaving.

Richard Maltby: Ain't Misbehaving, uh, was really successful and for two years I did nothing but open companies Of Ain't Misbehaving.

There were five companies traveling around the country at the same time, which meant we had to invent, you know, with understudies 10 Nell Carters and 10 Ken Pages and 10 André de Shields. We had a sort of a factory inventing. Anyway, they, it took

Barry Joseph: Sounds like its own set of puzzles.

Richard Maltby: It was definitely a full-time job.

And, uh, so I couldn't do that and then, um, uh, Harper's Magazine came to me about, uh, 10 years after that and asked if I would do it. Their schedule is better because it was only one a month instead of one every three weeks. And I said I would do that if my friend, uh, could, uh.

Hands are going up. See the hands? Oh, the 5 0 5 minutes are up. No,

Barry Joseph: That, that tells us we can keep going. Oh. But we will get to, I think to the end of you doing cryptics today. But please tell the full story. Don't let them be so rude...

Richard Maltby, Jr.: I don't remember where I was.

Barry Joseph: So you, you had a friend who was helping.

Richard Maltby: Uh, he actually did the puzzles and I sort of supervised it and I, he would do the puzzles and I would edit the clues and, and everything.

And that lasted for a while. And then he had a stroke and I had to take it over. And I've been doing them ever since. I just went, sent one off this morning, as a matter of fact.

Barry Joseph: To Harper's.

Richard Maltby: Yeah. If, if, if you, if you do cryptic puzzles or if you, if you like them, I hope you do mine because I have one goal in life, which is I want you to laugh.

I want the clue to actually crack you up when you finally figure out you've been had and you've been, that, that word means something else. Um, I want you to laugh.

Barry Joseph: Do you recall the one that you gave me as an example to make me laugh? I only know 'cause it's the one you told me for the book, but I don't know if it's the first one will come to mind for you.

Richard Maltby: No,

Barry Joseph: I'll whisper it in your ear.

Richard Maltby: I don't remember the clue.

Barry Joseph: Well, you'll just have to read it in the book then.

Richard Maltby: It's, I don't know. Somebody, somebody, the answer the answer was, was proctologist and it had something to do with, uh, uh, digital data and please join me. There was probably, there was an anagram of the word and then the, then, then the clue, the, the definition was, uh, something like that.,

Barry Joseph: and that's how I learned what a crytpic crossword puzzle was from Richard Maltby Jr.

Thank you Richard, so much for joining us tonight. Thank so much. I'm so glad.

Moments of clarity, moments of connection. Give it up again please for Richard Maltby.

A board game, a parlor game, and a puzzle. Now finally, a treasure hunt. Did anyone notice my dinosaur up here? Yes. You're gonna be hearing about this dinosaur shortly. This is my dinosaur. This is not from Steven Sondheim, but is inspired by one of Steven Sondheim's, and we'll talk about it very shortly. I told you in the beginning that I wasn't gonna be talking more about Ruth.

I was gonna talk more about the American Museum of Natural History, where we used to work together. She said, talk more about me. On October 3rd. 2011, Steven Sondheim produced A Little Jurassic Treasure Hunt at the American Museum of Natural History. Who here has been to the American Museum of Natural History?

Excellent. Hands down. Who's been in the last year? Good, but not good enough. All right. This was a fundraiser for his friend Cynthia O'Neill, for her nonprofit Friends In Deed, with 300 attendees at $1,500 a ticket. It was both his largest treasure hunt and the most expensive to experience. The hunt took place on the museum's fourth floor, and I saw most of the hands up here so you know that's the dino, we just call it the dinosaur floor. Attendees were broken into teams, and each team received a packet with 12 clues. There were instructions like this: allow for serendipity and don't use Google. It is cheating. This is 2011. Half of the clues were pictures like on the left, and half were words on the right and each resolved into the name of one of the ancient creatures on that floor.

Either it's street name or it's Latin name. But take a look. You see there's dashes underneath? That told you how many words, how many letters in those words. And then you see on the right, each of them has four dashes with 1, 2, 3, and 4 underneath it. Because solving the name of the animal was just the first step.

As you all know, I'm sure when you saw the image on the left, oh yeah, the Camotosaurus nanum, right, right? But you wonder, but why are there four numbers underneath it? So the way it works is underneath the 1 when you filled it in, you said, oh, the number 1's gonna be an A. And the number two is underneath the M.

This three is under another M, and the four is under an A. So you know, to fill in those four spaces in order A M, MA, and on the right, we all know the giant wombat is the Phascolonus. That gives us a new clue, NOSA. NOSA. And what Sondheim's Instructions explained, you have to combine all 12 sets of those four letters into a sentence, which would lead to the third step.

And if you want, I can keep going on about this, but I think you might rather hear from someone who was actually on the winning team that night. Please welcome Daria Begley to the stage. Daria is a native New Yorker, which has allowed her to be the New York correspondent for the Stephen Sondheim Society since 1996, nearly 30 years.

Please give it up for Daria. Thank you. And I dunno if you recognize the photo Daria, but this is Daria reflected in the phone that she won that night. Yeah, that was the phone when you showed it to me. Come have a seat and, uh, timers, you ready? Once we sit? Thank you, Daria. Thanks for joining us.

Daria Begley: Thank you.

Barry Joseph: What was it like?

Daria Begley: Oh my goodness. It, uh, it was exciting. Um, it was frazzled because there were about 10 teams. We were all in a rush. We were all, we were all stumped. And, um, it was about 60 minutes. I was lucky to be on the first team, the winning team, and we all ended up, um, in a tiny alcove.

That was the final clue where the, the treasure was. So we got to the room, there were about 10 of us, and it was an empty room, except it, there was a pedestal with a glass on top. So someone removed the, the glass and on top of like a black cloth was these, this

so there were about 10 of these. So we got it, but we were all perplexed because this, we didn't think this was the prize. 15, $1,500 for the prize. So, um, there was, uh, an assistant there and we said, what is, you know, she said, you won. You won. And we're like, is, is, is this the prize? And she said, he didn't tell us what the prize was.

So, uh, we were all perplexed, to say the least. So I went over, back to the pedestal and I, I ripped the cloth off of the pedestal and there were 10 little white bags and everyone just screamed. And, uh, I went up to the little chest and I opened it and there were about 10 little white shopping bags in it.

And in the bag was, uh, just a note that said a weekend in the country. So my husband and I spent a weekend in Saugerties at a, at a lovely hotel and, uh, a little, um, Motorola Android, my first cell phone. So that was it. It was a lovely, lovely night. And, uh, I got lucky. So

Barry Joseph: and so that, yeah, please give it up for Daria.

When I met Daria the first time, she, she showed me her dinosaur and it's just one you can buy in a store, back then. I had to go on eBay for this one, but I wanted to have my own copy, so when I was writing the book, I would have my own little T-Rex right there. But could we take a selfie together with the audience?

Oh, sure. Coming over. Is it okay if we take a photo with all of you? Alright, we, the house lights up please. Oh, so yeah, bring, bring our dinosaurs. You want you stand to my left.

Daria Begley: Hopefully it's a better picture.

Barry Joseph: Okay. On the count of three, say Sondheim. 1, 2, 3. Sondheim. Awesome. Daria, thank you so much for joining us tonight.

Daria Begley: Thank you.

Barry Joseph: I'll take the mic. You keep your dinosaur.

And now a full collection of all of the puzzles you just saw on the screen can now be found at the research library at the American Museum of Natural History in their gorgeous new Gilder center. So if you go to check it out, please tell Tom I said hi. Moments of clarity, moments of connection. So we tonight looked at how Steven Sondheim used games and puzzles to create moments of clarity and to create moments of connection.

But we didn't address why and what it might tell us about his personality. Puzzles can pose a challenge. I dare you to solve my puzzle. Games can offer an invitation. Come play with me. We can combine them to get, I dare you to come play with me. I push you away. I pull you in. Sondheim used play to invite others to connect with him, but only after a challenge had been conquered, an elaborate test, evaluating who might be safe enough to gain entry into his world. He didn't have a Helen Coates in that context: he was his own gatekeeper, but the treasure at the end of his challenge was the greatest of all entrance into the mind and heart of Stephen Sondheim. Thank you. But wait, there's more.

Tonight, of course, is not just any event for me. Tonight's the book release. Thank you. After more than three years working on this project, never alone, but always writing it on my own, I can now do just that. This is a book release. I release it to you. It's yours now and I can't wait to see what you do with it.

Go with clarity and connection. Okay, before we go into q and a, I think we have time for q and a. Lemme see. Yeah, we do. And then the book signing out in the hall. Here's ways to Stay in touch. First. Here's some upcoming events. I update this all the time on my website. You can see the first three right here in the library.

And the first two, as Adam mentioned in the beginning, in the new Harvey Firestein Theater Lab, which is fantastic. And you can see some of these coming up are remote. You can just do 'em online. Some are places you can go to like visit me at NYU or at the Drama Bookshop, or at The Wonderful World of W ords, the Mohonk Mountain House and more will be added all the time.

So let me know if you're gonna be joining me there, and I'll keep this up for a moment. As I said in the beginning, the book is done, but this project is far from done. I keep getting things all the time from people, someone who played something I never heard about, someone who kept something. In the book I'm describing, uh, a treasure hunt that someone played in 1973 at a cast party for a little night music, and they were on the winning team and they kept all the questions and answers in a drawer for over 50 years. Things keep popping up. I'm gonna keep sharing them in my Instagram account. As I mentioned, I spoke to over a hundred people. I have over 60 hours of original interviews with people like Daria and Richard and others, and many gave me permission to reuse them in other contexts.

So I take clips from them, I organize them by theme, and I bring other people in and I chat with them on my podcast, which started last month. This week was about Steven Sondheim and Jigsaw Puzzles. Next week is me in conversation with Richard Schoch, but his book that came out last year. And of course, here's just a way to keep in contact with me.

This brings me to my website. You can contact me there. And also in the bottom see the X. If you wanna get irregular, infrequent, uh, emails from me about the book and what's happening, just click that box there. All right,

I'm gonna finish with this word. I'm gonna try to pronounce it. "Mero-mero." Totally madly in love, feeling enchanted and enamored. Feeling enchanted and enamored is how you all made me feel today. Thank you and totally madly in love is how I feel about all of you. Thank you so much.

And before I do a little q and a, because I think we have a little time, as I said, the research is not done. I don't know what this is and I need your help. Somebody sent it to me a few months ago. They said they found it on someone's Facebook page, but can't remember whose page. So let me share this with you.

It's a video. It's silent at first, but then sound will appear. If anyone here knows who's in these photos, what they're talking about, lemme know.

Stephen Spndheim: Ed and I immediately discovered that uh, we had a common interest in games and Ed, as a matter of fact, had the patience to try to play a game of Go with me.

That lasted for about, uh, two hours during which Tom, I think we made maybe a total of 15 moves. And, uh, I've often thought that, uh, we both ended up in the wrong business. I think maybe we should have had a partnership and gone into games because we'd be the, the heads of Atari by now.

Barry Joseph: I believe whoever took this photo of Steven Sondheim is the person he's talking about. Ed. And maybe that was Ed in the beginning, but I have no clue. Does anyone here know? I don't know. Alright. Well, the mystery continues. We continue to live in a liminal space together as it all continues to evolve.

So with that, is there anyone on the crew who has a hand mic that can, excellent. All right. So if you would like to ask me a question, um, just look to your left and right and flag someone down. And I'm gonna sit here and chat with all of you. Put up your hand if you have one. Ah, and stage left.

Say your name first, please.

Audience: Uh, my name is Sarah. Hi Sarah. Um, what did you find to be the absolute most interesting thing that you discovered about Sondheim?

Barry Joseph: What is the most interesting thing I learned about Steven Sondheim? This will probably come as no surprise, but he's brilliant. Doing this work helped me understand the level of that brilliance, the ability to, um, as he often said, walk past a movie theater that was playing a movie in this new thing called Cinerama and see it and say, oh, that's American.

I see Cinerama and I see meaning. He saw Cama and saw a collection of letters, which could be anagramized into a different word. That's a different way of experiencing reality. So the more I was able to both try to solve his puzzles, to look at his game designs, to meet people like Richard who can think that way, I got to understand a whole new way of experiencing the world that was beyond me, but I could also understand and appreciate what it meant for people to tackle how to, uh, uh, approach that world and live in both spaces.

In the back.

Audience: Of all the games and puzzles that Sondheim like that you researched, are there any that you like to play, like with friends or like, do you have a favorite one that you've like tried out with other people?

Barry Joseph: I opened the book by talking about one of my favorite puzzles 'cause it's when I got to experience my biggest moment of clarity. Uh, Steven Sondheim, um, in a number of his treasure hunts used, what I learned was called a grill and grid puzzle. So in a grid and grill puzzle, you have two sheets.

One is a grid. It kinda looks like a crossword puzzle where there's like black boxes and boxes with letters in them. And uh, think of something with a San Serif. And then the second sheet looks almost the same, but that's the grill. And some of those boxes are cut out.

They've been literally physically cut out with some, some kind of, uh, sharp item. So it looks like you can put the grill over the grid, which of course is what you're supposed to do. And the one that I did was from the City Center treasure hunt. Uh, and I'll share this example 'cause I opened the book with it.

So the spoilers right there, and I did, I thought you were supposed to do, I put it right on top and you know, let, some letters came through the holes and I tried to line up with the ones on the top and I couldn't get it to spell anything. There were words in there, but there was no meaning to it at all. It was gibberish and so, of course I, I tried to shift it this way and shift it that way. Nothing. And I put it down. And then I remembered what had happened at the party when- it was at a birthday party when he had presented it. 'cause the crowd there also had a difficult time. And what he said to them was, you just need to, to, to think a little bit differently.

And so I remembered that. And so I said, okay, I shouldn't feel bad about myself. This entire party of 80 people also couldn't do it. But as soon as he said that to them, people got it. So I said, okay, let me rethink. How can I think about it differently? And then I did, and I got it, and all I had to do was turn it upside down.

Now you would think, turn it upside down? That shouldn't be that complicated. Why wouldn't you just do that right away? Well, it's designed so that when you look at the the grid, there are letters that can go both directions and M can become a W, right? Ns work both ways, but a T that doesn't work upside down and R doesn't work upside down.

So you would visibly look at it. You would think, oh, what if I turn it upside down? You would see the things that don't flip and then you wouldn't do it. And I've watched people do this time and again, I watched them try and solve it. I see them think it and they don't do it. So Sondheim was able to use the way we structure our mind, the way we try and solve puzzles, then use that against us.

And I thought that was brilliant. And in that moment when I got it, I was like, oh, I see what this is about. I'd worked my way through that process with his help remotely over time. There's uh, two on the back here, on that side. Hi, what's your name?

Audience: Hi, I am Debbie.

Barry Joseph: Hi, Debbie.

Audience: Great night. Thank you. Thank you. Um, so in if, first of all then what you just said, that was kind of interesting to me because it's almost like, um, it's almost like he had to, he had to have grown up in a, in a way that would isolate his thinking maybe, or emotionally maybe. And then come across um, Hammerstein and then feel more relaxed and open and then engaging. But I was just curious what he was like as a kid when he started to do puzzles and when he started to invent his own puzzles. That's the question.

Barry Joseph: Great question. So what do we know about Sondheim as a child in his relationship with puzzles and games?

Well, many of you, I'm sure have heard Steven Sondheim say in one way or another, order outta chaos. Order outta chaos. And he, if we all put up our hand and said, where we heard him say it, he was probably talking about something different. He used it many different times, but it was always the same concept at its core that, um, there, there are things in his life that he had no control over and this other thing brought order to his life, or it brings order for all of us in the way that art, for example, looks at the chaos of the world and makes it accessible for us. When he did his interviews with Meryle Secrest in his 1990s biography.

He had a revelation while he was speaking with her. He was talking with her about when his parents got divorced, when he was, uh, uh, a tween, I believe. Um, he was talking about how much he loved afterwards being sent to military school. He loved the order of it. He wasn't as interested in games beforehand, but he got interested after and he started connecting all those puzzle pieces and realized that after his parents got divorced, he started looking for order and the chaos in his life in different ways.

Some of it was in music, some of it was in military school in the order there, and some was in games and puzzles. So that's what started him getting interesting in games and puzzles as a way to make sense of his world. And when he was a teenager, he designed a board game. When he was a teenager, he designed a word puzzle and sent it the New York Times.

He was already creating things and trying to share them out in the world. And by the time he was in his early twenties, he still kept designing things and potentially they were maybe more for his friends than to be out in the world, um, but even as we heard from Richard, by the time he got to 1968 and 69, he was now the founding puzzle editor at New York Magazine, putting his puzzle interests out into the world.

So we see a through line from when he was a teenager, trying to be a puzzle designer and being a game designer and then trying to figure out: how does that fit into my professional life? How does it connect with what I'm doing in musical theater? Where's the line? Where should it blur?

And as Richard we talking about with Company, he started then separating that from his life. The Last of Sheila, 1973, gave him an opportunity to bring it back and create something new. He loved murder mysteries and he got to write his only Hollywood, uh, movie that was produced. It was all based on his games and designs that he had been creating on his own and with Anthony Perkins.

But that's a separate topic. Lemme check the time for a moment. See if we have time for one more. What I wanna do is hear your question, you both of your questions and the one over out there if you still have it sir, I'll hear them and I'll decide how I'm gonna process that and that'll be the end for the questions and answers 'cause of time.

Audience: Thank you Barry. My name is Evelyn and I did try to make order out of the chaos in your dedication.

It took

Barry Joseph: the dedication in my book.

Audience: Yes. And after the GD comma I got lost. Can you give us a spoiler here or,

Barry Joseph: so she's asking for a hint because there is at least one puzzle hidden in the book. One is announcing itself right away 'cause it's the dedication in the beginning.

And what I'll do is say, come see me afterwards. I'm happy to give you a hint 'cause other folks might not wanna know that hint yet before they go in. Thanks for asking. Alright. I'm trying not to answer these before I hear them.

Audience: Hi, my name is Susan. I think that your research itself is a puzzle in and of itself, and I'm interested in, um, your process and how you were able to comb through 400,000 items in Leonard Bernstein's, um, catalog and find the puzzle.

Barry Joseph: Thank you. Great question. You sir?

Audience: Uh,

Barry Joseph: my name is Bob.

Audience: Um, a question is to what degree did the, was it was the ability of people participating in his puzzles, something of, of a gatekeeper in terms of how he built his social circle and was there any, has any stories of people who were very good or got frustrated that were essentially ejected from the social circle?

Barry Joseph: And did you wanna ask yours too, sir?

Audience: Hi, my name's John. Um, were these games ancient? Did did Egyptians sit around playing with these kind of games and do they have a history throughout our cultural life and all that? And you sort of answered that he then created his own games.

Barry Joseph: Excellent question.

Let's see if I can remember them and put them all together in a quick answer. Um, I am not in a position to talk about how Steven Sondheim made his friends, that that's not what I know, but I can share that many of his friends spent time playing games with him. That, uh, there was at least one person who we have on record in the 1960s talking about, you know, leaving his game parties in tears 'cause they were pretty hostile back in the sixties. But in his later life, they were more defined as being generous both in his gameplay and in their design. Uh, remind me your question. The research, the, the research. The research. So yes, there's so much out in the world. What do I know? I'm not in the theater world, right?

I wasn't in Steven Sondheim's circle. To find out what was out there I had to build a community that would trust me and wanna share with me what they know. How did I find that one pin in the Library of Congress? Someone knew about it and they told me about it. Once I knew about something, then I had to build the relationships to get access to them.

I thanked Alexander Bernstein in the beginning. Without him, I would not have had access to be able to do what I did, uh, to be able to write about them in the way that I did in the book. So it's all about building connections. And just to answer the general question about games, Stephen Sondheim loved to collect old European board games.

Many of them were sold for thousands of dollars at the Doyle auction last year that he put on the wall. But if you ask them about playing them, he would say they were boring. They're just, you know, roll and move games. You roll a dice and you move, you move. But he loved the way they looked. His games were very different.

His games that he designed, his board games, let's just say that's worth its own talking. If you're interested, please pick up my book outside. Thank you all so much.