Barry Joseph: Welcome to the new episode of Matching Minds with Sondheim. On this episode, well, the focus is gonna be on me. I mean, I have my own podcast, so when I bring guests on, I try and keep the focus on them. I already had my chance to say what I think in my book, so I think it's kind of unfair if I put my opinion in too much.

But when I get to be on other people's podcasts and then all attention's on me, me, me. And I really loved my time on Donald Feltham's Broadway Radio Show, which is not a podcast, it just streams from his website. I recommend you check it out. That means he can include music in it in a way that I can't, in this re- well, it's not really a podcast, but re-streaming of this really wonderful interview.

I love chatting with Donald. When. I share with guests on my shows audio from their own appearance people often get a little bit shy and don't like hearing themselves, and honestly, I can feel that way sometimes too. But when I heard this episode, I just loved it. I really loved how I came across. I loved my conversations with Donald and what he was able to bring out in me, and I thought just did a really good job representing the history of the project and what it's meant for me in my life and the kind of things I like to share with people about it.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. See you at the other end.

Donald Feltham: Welcome to the Broadway Radio show. I am Donald Feltham. And November is turning into the Broadway radio show, book club, as we have a lot of authors on talking about some wonderful theater books. And it's appropriate since we're heading into the holiday season. And books make wonderful gifts for friends and family members who are fans of theater or for yourself. And I have a wonderful book to talk about on this episode and the author is here to chat about it. It is a book focusing on Stephen Sondheim. And before you say to yourself, do we really need another book on Stephen Sondheim? Let me tell you that this book is intriguing, fascinating, entertaining, and a must have if you want a deeper understanding of who Stephen Sondheim was. And if you thought you knew all about Stephen Sondheim, you are sorely mistaken, as you will find out when you read this book and you will not look at or listen to a Stephen Sondheim musical the same way again.

The book is called Matching Minds with Sondheim: the Puzzles and Games of the Broadway Legend, written by Barry Joseph. And Barry Joseph is here. Hi Barry.

Barry Joseph: Hi, Donald. That was such a sweet introduction. Can I take you on the road with me?

Donald Feltham: Yes, you absolutely can. I loved the book. As many people I think know Sondheim had a real love for puzzles and games, but I don't think people really understood how much this was a part of his life. 'Cause this is what the book really is focused on. Is really this whole other side of him that a lot of people know about. But you really dive in, like really dive in. So, talk about your background 'cause I know games are a big part of your life. And also how the book came about. 'Cause I think it came about with some birthday gifts from your wife. Is that right?

Barry Joseph: Absolutely. That's right. It's all thanks to my wife. So, I come to this project as a lover of Stephen Sondheim and his musicals. I grew up adoring West Side story, I would lie on the red shag carpet in my family home on Long Island, listening to my family's albums. And that movie soundtrack to West Side Story. And those LPs were in constant rotation for me. I just would just sit there looking at the LP cover and just imagining what was happening in this movie and just diving into the lyrics of that show. They really spoke to me. I didn't know who Stephen Sondheim was and I didn't appreciate who it was, who was helping me to have the feelings I was having until I was many years older.

And once I was an adult and I discovered Assassins and Merrily We Roll Along and Into the Woods, I began a lifelong love of his work and the work he did with all of his incredible collaborators. At the same time, I was also a game designer. I've been working with young people for over 20 years, helping them to develop the skills to think about games from a designer perspective. Often working with designers professionally in the industry to make their own games and often giving them skills to actually be the ones doing the coding and to create their own. I've produced my own games working in settings like the American Museum of Natural History and afterschool programs in New York City. Even the Girl Scouts of the USA where I worked at the national headquarters, here in New York City. But for me, those were two separate worlds. They had nothing to do with each other. So you mentioned that I got a present from my wife, and that present was three books. These books came at a very particular time. Stephen Sondheim passed away in November of 2021. And I don't think it was a coincidence that my birthday in March of 2022, ,which was actually two days after Stephen Sondheim's birthday, was a collection of three books, some new and some old that my wife had collected to give me an opportunity to spend some more time with this man and the work that I loved so much. And for me, it really was my beginning of going behind the shows. I've always experienced Sondheim, as through his work. Through maybe some interviews, maybe in an HBO special, but otherwise it was the work itself. So for the first time I got to read Meryle Secrest biography from the 1990s. That is an, based on over a hundred hours she did with Sondheim, with people in his life to really understand who he was and what led him to make the work he did. Of course, ending in the 1990s. Then there was the book by James Lapine, that was the oral history of Sunday in the park with George. That was the most recent book. And then the third book was a postmodern analysis of all of Stephen Sondheim's shows. And that's the book I read first. And I found that one so interesting because someone had a particular expertise, a frame of how to look at theater. And they applied that frame to Stephen Sondheim's work. And I enjoyed it. It helped me understand the shows in a new way, but it also made me ask a question, what other frames remain out there? What are other ways to look at his work and understand it in a new way because of the frame that they used? So keeping that in mind, that question, I'm thinking, what are other frames?

I, then, read Meryle Secrest's book within which she does reference that. Stephen Sondheim occasionally did things with puzzles, mentioned some things with games. But just to put it in context, there is nothing about games or puzzles in the index in the back of the book. That's how little the book wants to pay attention to it. So there were hints in there, it's curious but really wasn't addressed. And in fact, she minimized it. She didn't think it was very important. Somewhat trivial, let's say. But then the third book was the James Lapine Book. And for those who know Sondheim's work well will know that James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim met very soon after Stephen Sondheim's critical disaster of Merrily We Roll Along, which was barely two weeks live on Broadway.

And when it fell hard. And the critics pounced and Stephen Sondheim was really personally feeling particularly attacked, that it was a very hostile environment to be in. And when he met James Lapine, he was thinking about potentially leaving the business. At least that's how the conversation goes. As recounted in the book, and I'm now gonna paraphrase here. James Lapine was saying, oh, if you were gonna leave musical theater, what industry were you gonna go into? And Stephen Sondheim replies: video game design. And that's it. It just sits there on the page. And then before long, the two of them start collaborating and they make Sunday in the park with George. And the rest is history. And Sondheim continued to stay in musical theater. But that note of video game design, we're talking about the early 1980s. This is Atari and a television. What could Stephen Sondheim could possibly have been thinking is what went through my mind and coming at this from not just a perspective of being a lover of his work, but being a game designer who doesn't only work with young people to design games and works with adults, to design games with social content.

I work with people who study games, who write books about games, who hold academic chairs at universities all around the country and do, you know, major pieces about how games impact, how we think about the world, how gameplay and design is integrated into modern society. Stephen Sondheim was thinking about this in the early eighties before all this work where people really weren't thinking hard about the values that games can bring into our lives. So I wanted to get to the bottom of it. So for me, it was the beginning of a mystery. I began doing what anyone usually does a few years ago, when they wanted to learn something new. They Googled it, and I found all sorts of tidbits that teased me. There were suggestions of something that never went deeper. Sometimes there were interviews with Sondheim where he'd be asked about games and puzzles, but really it was a way to talk about how he wrote his lyrics. Or Stephen Sondheim would bring up a puzzle that he would design for New Yorker magazine. Or a board game he made for Leonard Bernstein in 1968. But then the interviewer didn't wanna talk about that, and they went back to his shows. So, we had all these moments where it would it would bubble to the surface and then like a bubble would pop and go away. And then of course, those led me to things that he did do publicly. He was the founding puzzle editor for New York Magazine when it was founded in New York in 1968. He was here in New York, working on New York Magazine for just over a year, creating really elaborate, complex, challenging puzzles. Every week. He worked with Anthony Perkins and made the movie The Last of Sheila, which most of us knew as a murder mystery. But actually the first half of the movie is based on three different types of parlor games and puzzles that he created. And just adapted for the movie. So, it turned out there were all these things that were somewhat hidden in plain sight of his work. But the vast majority of what Stephen Sondheim did with puzzles and games, and here I'm talking about parlor games, board games, treasure hunts, crossword puzzles, escape rooms, jigsaw, so many more things were underneath the surface. And so to explore that, I had to either look at research institutions or talk to the people in his lives. And that meant, okay, if I wanna get into this, I need to dive deep, start building relationships with strangers, get them to trust me and listen to their stories.

Donald Feltham: I was gonna ask you the amount of research and interviews is phenomenal. You did I think you mentioned you did 60 interviews.

Speaker 3: I have 60 hours of original interviews with over 120 people.

Donald Feltham: This literally could have been a biography of a master game maker. Just ignore the fact that this is someone who wrote musicals. You literally are writing a biography of someone who made games and puzzles, and it's almost it's almost like a dual biography of someone who was leading a double life

Barry Joseph: You're absolutely right, Donald. That became my lens. I said, postmodernism could be an interesting lens for looking at musical theater. What could be a new lens for looking at Stephen Sondheim? It turned out there, it was right in front of me. It's what I call a ludological lens. Ludology is the study of play, and so if you're an academic who works at New York University and studies games, you do Ludology. Or you are a ludologist. And I never set out to write a biography of Stephen Sondheim, but the bulk of the book, the first 250 pages I subtitle as a ludological biography. It's looking at Stephen Sondheim's life from the lens of play.

Donald Feltham: Let's discuss the structure of the book because you have broken the book into two sections of chapters. And you very playfully have stolen something from Anyone Can Whistle which I thought was very clever because you name the first section of chapters, "Group One" and then you have "Group A" as the second part of the book, which is the second group of chapters, which is right out of Anyone Can Whistle. But the first part is the biographical section, which is meant to be read in chronological order. And that is the section that kind of follows Sondheim through the Parlor Games, which includes The Murder Game. And then you go to the treasure hunts and the board games and the word puzzles, and then the physical puzzles, like the jigsaw puzzles and the escape rooms before you then get to "Group A", which is how to actually play the Sondheim Way, which is a resource reference section for anyone who wants to dive in, into those different chapters on their own to figure out how to actually host your own murder game. It gives you the instructions on how to do some of these games that he created.

Talk about cracking the door open and getting into that world. Because that's the thing that's so amazing is that it's a whole separate world that he was living in. With a whole group of friends and associates and other game makers and puzzle designers and people who were not necessarily in the musical theater world, although there is some overlap because there are some people who he pulled in from the entertainment business, the theater business, who also were into this. But a lot of these people are going to be total totally unknown to people who are musical theater fans because they're people who were big names in puzzles and games, and they were kind of part of his second life.

Barry Joseph: That's right. In fact, we should also mention in the first section. Each chapter begins with a cast of characters.

Donald Feltham: Yes. Yes. I love that.

Barry Joseph: And it lists people you might know. But the descriptions next to their name about their role might not be what you expect. It might say Leonard Bernstein: playmate. So we're introducing people in this new context, through this new lens. So, for me, part of what's so exciting about taking on a new research project to write a book about something that I have an idea around, but I don't know "what the story is", and I put that in quotes. What's the story to tell... means that I get to dig deep and let the material tell me what's the best form for communicating it. One of the key lessons that Stephen Sondheim talks about in writing lyrics, right? Content dictates form. Until I know what the content is, I dunno what the form is. So when I'm doing my research interviews and I'm speaking with people and I'm getting information from Yale University's research institution or Library of Congress, or I'm finding some materials from a game that someone found in a drawer that's 50 years old and they send it to me, I'm just absorbing it all. And as I'm absorbing it and I start thinking about telling it to other people, the story starts being formed. And I went back and forth through many different structures, and as I landed on the core structure of the book, the first part you talked about where we're moving through Sondheim's life, but we're looking and doing deep dives into each area, one at a time.

That meant I put everything else aside that didn't fit into it. So what didn't fit into that? An analysis of games and puzzles in Sondheim's shows. Really didn't fit into an analysis of history of his life and how he played with them. That's an interesting topic, but that's separate. A timeline that would describe what happened, what year? One after the other. The values that he was communicating through his very designs that you can get through analysis of his games that was extra. And like you said, here's how you can design your own, or here's how you can play "The Murder Game" in your own house. That was all extra. So as I was collecting those extras, what I realized I was doing was creating a body of work that was comprehensive. Looking at Stephen Sondheim's life from the perspective of play and looking at the very puzzles and games that he designed from the perspective of the people who played them and collaborated with him on them. That's the body of work. And the next body of work that should follow is an analysis of all this. What can we learn from that? Now, that workbook itself, that part, those about 250 pages, has a conclusion. It is teaching us something about who Stephen Sondheim was. It talks about what he was doing with games, connecting people. What he was doing with puzzles, creating moments of crystal clarity, and it's framed around why Stephen Sondheim would be even motivated to do that.

So it tells its own story. But then, there could be another book analyzing all of that. And that's what the next section is that you described, Donald. That's the place to say, okay, we just learned about all these games. What could we learn from their designs? How can I make them myself? How do they impact his music? And so all of the chapters that come at the end are all based on things that people said, oh, but you have to include this. Or people are gonna wanna experience this next. And sometimes I would say, that's fine. I'll let someone else write that.

And other people said, no, you should be the first one to write it. Let them build on you. So in writing the history of Stephen Sondheim in games and puzzles, I tried to be as comprehensive as I can, to tell a story as tight as I could to keep it engaging and really have it flow. And then I started what I hope will be the next round of scholarship, which is saying, what can we learn from all this? And I dive into a number of different areas as I just described, just to get the ball rolling.

Donald Feltham: And I think you really accomplished that because the first part really sets up the second part really well because you really open the reader's eyes to a side of Sondheim that I don't think a lot of people were aware of. It's really hard to grasp how his brain works until you read the first part of the book and see how complex his brain was and how complex his thought process was.

But at the same time as high of a pedestal as musical theater put him on as this godlike figure in the world of musical theater. Reading this whole history of him in his world of games and puzzles. He's as brilliant as he is and as smart as he is, and as genius as he is at putting together some of these complex games, which we'll go into in a little more detail in a moment.

But you also get that he's playful, he's funny, he's generous, he's incredibly social, which a lot of people I don't know, realize that. He loves being around people. He loves being at these things and watching the games work and watching people struggle and participate, but he doesn't want to make them so hard that people don't have a good time. He wants people to enjoy it. He gets pleasure out of people getting the right answer and getting the satisfaction of getting the right answers-

Barry Joseph: And struggling to get to those answers.

Donald Feltham: Yeah. And you get to see this relatable person that I think people don't always think of him as.

Barry Joseph: And I think part of why we got that, Donald, is because I wrote this book at a very particular period of time. I mentioned that I got the books, and he had the idea to write this book inspired by what I'd read only a few months after he passed away. We're talking about March. He died in November. It wasn't even half a year at that point. So when I started working on the project, just two months later, I ended up being in a situation that I didn't think I was gonna find myself in. I was calling up people and said, hi your friend just passed away. Your creative collaborator just passed away. Would you talk with me about your time with him? Not about writing musicals. Not about singing his songs, not about staging his productions, but what it was like. To be his friend. What was it like to go to his house for a games party? What was it like to show up for one of his treasure hunts? What was it like to produce one of his treasure hunts, or go with him to an escape room and try and solve an escape room? This meant that people were being asked to perhaps talk publicly about something they've never been asked to talk about before, but they were talking about it while they were still grieving. At one stage or another. And as a result, I think people loved an opportunity to get to remember their friend. And delighted in being back with those memories. And I can't tell you Donald, how many times I would reach out to people. 'cause literally, what am I saying? 70 years ago, 60 years ago, 50 years ago, on one night you went to Stephen Sondheim's house. Can you now tell me about it? And people would say, I can't, I'm not gonna remember anything. I can't remember what I had for breakfast, but I'm like, oh just get on to zoom with me and we'll just chat a little bit. If it's a few minutes, it's fine. And more often than not, they were the ones who didn't want the call to end. Because they just always had something more to tell me. And I just relished what they were telling me. I would just sit there and listen and asked questions to get clarity and just try to receive their experiences, receive their stories, and receive the joy that was being communicated to me and how much they missed how fun he was to be with. Richard Maltby Jr spoke about that quite often. He would just say how much it was so fun to be with him. And that's what we miss the most about him.

Donald Feltham: And I think also that a lot of the people you interviewed are people that are not from the world of theater. They're people from the world of games and puzzles who were not necessarily in awe of Stephen Sondheim. They looked at him as a peer in some ways. They looked at him as another game and puzzle maker just like them. And some of the people were people that Sondheim himself looked up to. I love the end, towards the end you talk about the puzzle boxes and how he collected puzzle boxes and he loved them even though he himself admitted he couldn't open them.

Barry Joseph: He just loved the design of them.

Donald Feltham: He loved the design them.

Barry Joseph: The puzzle design of them.

Donald Feltham: Yeah. Yeah. But even he couldn't figure out how to open them. And you interviewed the guy who designed a lot of them and he was like amazed that Sondheim collected so many of them.

Barry Joseph: Donald. Let me "yes and" you there. I think. Yes. The people I'm talking about who will be new to many of the readers are people who Stephen Sondheim looked up to as being masters in their craft, who he admired. But I wouldn't say they necessarily treated Sondheim as just another client. They also had to balance in their mind that I can't believe I'm talking to Stephen Sondheim. And he's telling me I make the best puzzle boxes, and he's telling me I make the best cryptic crosswords. These are people for whom getting that appreciation from Stephen Sondheim was even more valuable because they appreciated what a genius was directing attention towards them.

Donald Feltham: Yes. The nice thing about the book is that oftentimes, and that it happens on more than one occasion, where their initial correspondence with him is just a note or an email or something from signed by Steve, and they don't necessarily know what Sondheim, initially. Until they finally realize it's Sondheim and they're like, oh! I've been dealing with Stephen Sondheim this whole time.

Barry Joseph: That's right. And Stephen Sondheim might've assumed they knew, you described the puzzle boxes, so that's a chapter talking about Kagen Sound. Who's one of the world's greatest puzzle boxes designers and probably the best one in America. And he had a client who was just ordering boxes, and his name was Steve. And at one point Stephen Sondheim wrote, oh, I presume you know who I am. And Kagen Sound didn't know who this Steve was. It's Stephen Sondheim. That Kagen sound was like, oh my gosh, I am sitting here like in my basement. I think he's in Colorado all by myself. I isolated making this work that goes out into the world, which he doesn't necessarily see. And now he sees that someone at the stature of Stephen Sondheim is appreciating his works. It made him felt seen in a new way. And for me, as an audience member of Sondheim shows, why do I love them? They make me feel seen. There's something unique about me that I think is special, but how I approach the world. And yet when I go to one of his shows, I feel like, oh, Sondheim gets that. His shows are speaking to that part of myself. And that's what Kagen Sound was saying. But he was saying it because he was appreciating his work in puzzle design. And so then where's Kagen Sound? A few years later, he's watching Six by Sondheim. On HBO, there's Stephen Sondheim sitting on his piano, in Connecticut, with some narration talking about what it's like to create musicals later in his life and what's on his piano? Kagen Sound's puzzle boxes, right? And so there he is watching something about Stephen Sondheim and he's wait, that's my work. Those are my boxes right there.

Donald Feltham: I do wanna talk about - give people some samples of some of the stories you talk about. I wanna talk about the treasure hunts because I think the treasure hunts are amazing because first off, the scale of the treasure hunts that he created in particular the city center treasure hunt. And how it was based on, could you talk about that? And you also talk about how it was inspired by the 70th birthday treasure hunt, which went all over New York City. That one was crazy how that was set up. And then he did it within the city center space.

Barry Joseph: That's right.

Donald Feltham: Which is amazing itself. But talk a little bit about the complexities and logistics of what he had to pull off.

Barry Joseph: Donald. Absolutely. And those are two great ones to talk about. 'Cause those are the ones that bookended Stephen Sondheim's life making treasure hunts. The first documented treasure hunt that he ever designed, I think it probably was his first one, was for Halloween in 1968, he designed it with Anthony Perkins. That's its own story right there. And Stephen Sondheim was essentially gonna have a Halloween party at his house, and he arranged to have limos come up and roll up to the building. And at a certain point, I think there were five teams and the teams were rearranged and they were given bags of materials and clues, and people would pile into those limousines and then try drive all over New York City trying to solve the clues. Each clue took 'em to another location so they can get to the end. And there was a politician who had failed to run for political office that they found an Anthony Perkins basement. And so they took those posters and placed them at all the locations so they would know they were on the right track. And in each location there were different puzzles. And of all of Stephen Sondheim's puzzles and games, all of the crossword puzzles, this one party gets described the most perhaps because so many incredible people were there who then wrote about it in their autobiographies and biographies and in interviews. And so we've gotten tidbits over time, and this is the first time I think all the tidbits have been collected into one tale. And in fact Grover Dale, who was a dancer in West Side Story in the 1950s and partners with Anthony Perkins in the 1960s, I think he's the only person left alive who was at that party. And I got to interview him for the book. He talks about how amazing it was being in the limousine and how challenging it was solving the puzzles. But the puzzles were things like they would come up to a door. You're on the streets of New York City and they can hear a song being played without the words. Just the music. And at the time, it was something they could recognize. It was a song that Frank Sinatra was singing or had been singing recently. And the lyrics are " it's a quarter to three". And so they're trying to figure out in their head, 'cause they're playing the lyrics in their head, what it can mean. And they go, oh, quarter to three. Quarter to three. That's 2 45. And then 2 45 became the address of their next location. That's pretty innovative at the time. It's using technology. It's using something that was gonna play music on a loop. It was doing a song that they would know. So it's using pop culture. And then it's having people think about it in a new way. You don't usually think about the numbers in time. Being translated into another context. And those are all the kind of brilliant things Sondheim did throughout his designs. That was the first one in 1968. He made treasure hunts throughout his life and I was able to document about seven of them in the book.

And very fortunately, many people kept the questions from the hunts and sent them to me. And I'm able to analyze them in the book and in fact play them with people because many of his questions were not, did not require you to be in that physical location. Many did, of course, like the one I just described. But many did not, which meant we could look at how he thought about engaging people's minds and how to challenge them in a way that would feel engaging. If it's too simple, it'll be boring. If it's too hard, you'll feel shut down. So, you have to figure out exactly where people are, and you have to also figure out how to speak to different people. Some people like to think laterally. Some people are all about words. Some are about spatial. Some might really not wanna be there to play at all. They're just there to socialize. So how do you keep everyone engaged? And you see him coming up with tools and techniques throughout. And so we see that in his last one, which I think was his most magnificent one. That was in 2013. It was in March and it was a birthday party for Perry Granoff. If people don't recognize the name of Perry or Perry Granoff, the Granoffs, I believe. Were involved in the 1970s in Pacific Overtures. They were one of the investors and they were involved in Stephen Sondheim's life ever since they became very close friends. So close that Marty, who's Perry's husband, said to Stephen Sondheim and probably the year before, we're having a birthday for my wife next year, for her 70th. She's on the board of City Center, and we're gonna hold it there in City center. What do you think about making a treasure hunt? And Marty said it like off the cuff really not expecting anything to happen. And he was shocked when Stephen saw him, said, yeah, I'd be happy to do that. And that blew him away. And so Marty said, what do you need? And he said I need a party planner. I need someone who's gonna gimme access to the space. Someone who can help me test the questions and bring people together. Kinda have a dress rehearsal. And so starting in the winter of 2023 her name was Maria. Coincidence, right there, with West Side Story. Maria would come over to Sondheim's house in Turtle Bay, sit there on his carpet, and Sondheim would throw questions at her and watch her try and solve them. And at first she was like, I don't think I'm the kind of person who you're looking to design these for. But he was like no, you are. All these people coming to the party would have no idea there was gonna be a treasure hunt. They didn't come to play. They came to celebrate a friend. It was gonna be held during the cocktail party, so people were gonna be drinking. So who knows? You know how much they might have imbibed by that point. And Stephen Sondheim said, no, you're perfect and you're gonna help me bring people together to test this out. So they worked together in his house to come up with the questions and think about how to physically locate the puzzles and the solutions throughout the building, so people weren't just sitting in one room. They were going through all the floors of the building trying to solve these puzzles that together would lead you to a meta puzzle that would eventually get you to the treasure chest at the end.

Donald Feltham: But then you recreated it.

Barry Joseph: That's right. I had to .

Donald Feltham: Yeah, because in order to get a feel for how it worked.

Barry Joseph: And because I didn't have the answers.

Donald Feltham: So you got a group of people together to do it basically. Basically over zoom, right?

Barry Joseph: Over zoom, yeah. We spent three hours and these were all people who by definition knew Stephen Sondheim. They were friends, they were collaborators, and they knew something about puzzles and games. Richard Maltby Jr. For example, Richard Maltby Jr. Was close friends with Stephen Sondheim. He, they, in the sixties were doing, creating musicals together and supporting each other. When Stephen Sondheim started doing the Cry Crosswords for New York Magazine, Richard Maltby learned about Cryptics and became quite good and loved them so much that when Stephen Sondheim left New York Magazine to go work on a show called Company, Richard Maltby didn't want them to end. And so working with Stephen Sondheim as his mentor, he learned how to create cryptic crosswords, began to make them for New York Magazine, and he's still making them today. Not for New York Magazine now for Harper's. And so he's someone who comes from the world of musical theater, right? He won the Tony for Ain't Misbehaving. And he's , one of the most prolific crypto crossword puzzle designers in the country. So I had people like that. People could both talk about their relationship with Stephen Sondheim, but also understand the puzzle design that Stephen Sondheim was doing. So we could not only play the games to get the answers, 'cause I didn't have the answers. All I had was the questions. But to answer this question, what does this puzzle tell you about Stephen Sondheim? About how his mind worked, about his creativity and about his personality. And so these are people who could come from, they knew him. They knew him quite well. So that was an incredibly fun afternoon. And we pretended we were in city center, everyone was home wherever they were in Denver or New York City. And I would put a back an image behind me in Zoom of City Center and I would pretend to be the person, the master of ceremonies. And we would go through each puzzle and solve it and then do that kind of deep analysis about what we can learn about it.

Donald Feltham: That's a fascinating section of the book because it, you get a feel for what it must have been like that evening at City Center trying to figure out and you do have recollections of people who were there and how they were trying to make it, how they were running around like crazy trying to solve the puzzles and try to figure out where they needed to be.

Barry Joseph: That's right.

Donald Feltham: So it's just, it's, I it's just hard to fathom the intelligence and the mind of someone to come up with this. You're not only coming up with puzzles and things to solve, but also dealing with a large physical space, a building and trying to work in clues and puzzles that will lead people to different parts of the building and different clue. It's just, it's fascinating. Fascinating. But I also wanna talk about the famous murder game.

Barry Joseph: The murder game.

Donald Feltham: Because that comes up multiple times.

Barry Joseph: Yes.

Donald Feltham: Which people wanna talk about because, and it all, and it becomes, I, and pardon my using the phrase, but it becomes a bit of a mystery. Because finding out details about it become difficult because nobody wants to really talk too much about it, or people can remember very much about it.

Barry Joseph: Yeah.

Donald Feltham: And it becomes this famous thing that he used to have this murder game, and it's not quite the same as your typical murder game.

Barry Joseph: That's right.

Donald Feltham: In some ways, and it's also a murder game that you cannot play more than once.

Barry Joseph: That's right.

Donald Feltham: Because of the way the solution works out, and only one person apparently ever figured it out ahead of time. But but talk about The Murder Game and h and how you finally deciphered it and got it all together.

Barry Joseph: I love talking about The Murder Game. I mentioned earlier that I had to figure out what was the structure of the book. And at one point I thought I would only write about The Murder Game.

Donald Feltham: Oh, really?

Barry Joseph: I could create an entire book, a nonfiction book, just strung around the spine of the murder game because it touches every aspect of his life, not only in games and puzzles, but in musical theater as well. And it is just the gift that keeps on giving. It is remarkable how this one thing he designed once just kept spinning off and he kept building on it. And there's that mystery behind it. Like you just said, Donald people could only play it once. What does that mean? And that drove lots of people to wanna know more, but unless they'd play it, he wouldn't tell them. So we have that as a core mystery, and I was able to talk to some people who played it both in the 1960s and in the 2000 knots. So both in the beginning of his career with it, and towards the end, probably the last time he ever did it. But in between this game was adapted by Stephen Sondheim and inspired others to create all these other things. So first, what's The Murder Game? For those who don't know it by its name? You've probably played a version of it before. In general, it's this kind of parlor game that comes over from England initially where there's a group of people together. It's a social gathering and somehow it's distributed who the secret murderer is. There might be a deck of cards, and if you have a get a certain card, you're the murderer. Or maybe it's just a bunch of paper just crumpled up. Everyone opens it up, and if it's empty, you're just a potential victim who has to try and survive. But if you get the X, you're the murderer or the werewolf or the mafia don or the vampire, depending on how the game is being done. And these games have been adapted in all sorts of ways. The board game clue is an adaption in some ways, for example. And sometimes it's, you kill people by winking them, and it's wink murder. But essentially group of people get together. Someone's the secret villain and then everyone tries to survive them and then figure out who it was. That's the basic idea. And we have documentations of Sondheim back in the 1950s playing it, like having a party to bring people out to Long Island at a friend's house. And he is trying to figure out a better way to do it. He was always trying to figure out how to redesign it so it was more engaging, but there was still something he didn't like about it. Once you got killed, you are outta the game. There's nothing for you to do. And then everyone who's left is trying to guess who the person is, but there isn't in a lot of evidence. So he always thought that was silly. So he was always in the back of his mind trying different ideas. And he had the perfect occasion in 1965, he had a friend of his who was in a show outta state. It flopped, it wasn't gonna make it back to New York. He visited her backstage and said, I'm so sorry. What can I do? How can I cheer you up? And she said, when I get back to New York, throw a games party for me. And then she added, and "design a new games for me". That's all he needed to hear. Thank you for asking me and giving me an occasion, right? So he got back to New York and one night, and he described this on many occasions, he started sometime around eight o'clock to start thinking about a new way to do the murder game. And then it was eight in the morning and he never stopped. He just got into this deep flow state and while he was in it, he cracked the nut. He came up with a solution that worked for him to engage him in a way that he thought had never been done before that would solve all the problems. So when she came back to New York, I think it was that April of that year, I think it was 1965, he threw the party and it was a big hit. And he had designed other parlor games before and designed many after. But for some reason this one was different. And he kept being asked to throw it for his friends around New York, even in London. And as a result, a number of things happened first. Both of the Schaefer were there. Let's see if I get them right. Maybe you can help me. Oh, there's Andrew Shaffer.

Anthony Shaffer and who's the brother? Peter. Peter Anthony. Peter Shaffer.

And so one of them went on to create a play called Sleuth. Which was then adapted to a movie called Sleuth. If you haven't seen it, go watch the original. It's brilliant. At its core, there's two men, an older man and a younger man. And the older man essentially says, so I understand you wanna sleep with my wife. And it's a challenge of their minds to see if one could outwit the other. It is taking place in a home. That is very much based on Stephen Sondheim's home full of antique board games on the walls and puzzles. And he describes himself, the older gentleman in the movie as being someone who throws games, parties to bring people together. Everything he's saying about himself is right outta Stephen Sondheim.

Donald Feltham: Yeah.

Barry Joseph: And in fact, oh, I'm blanking on the person who started it. It's-

Donald Feltham: Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier, right?

Barry Joseph: Thank you. so Lawrence Olivier right after finishing filming it or just towards the end, ran into Stephen Sondheim, who was in London for a show. And he said, he says to Sondheim, he says, I'm playing you and Sondheim's thinking you're playing one of my albums. And he's no, I'm playing you in the movie! Like he was aware that he was being a version of Sondheim in the movie. And in fact, it was said the play at one point was being called, Who's Afraid Of Stephen Sondheim? Like they knew what they were doing, right? And so that's one direction where the murder game went. It's taking. Who Stephen Sondheim was as someone running a game party, like the murder game and taking that personality to this dark, direction. But Stephen Sondheim got to innovate it himself. And one of the people who played the game was Herbert Ross. Who was about to direct his first movie. And he called up Stephen Sondheim and said I love playing, I'm paraphrasing here. I love playing the murder game at your house. I think it would make a great movie. Would you adapt it for me? Sondheim said I've never written something like this before. I like the concept of murder mysteries. That'd be, that would be fun, but I need to do it with someone else. Let me see if I can get someone to do it with me. And he had already done a number of things with Anthony Perkins before designing games and challenging fun experiences. He loved his letters from Anthony Perkins. He knew he could write, and he also knew that Anthony Perkins loved murder mysteries even more than him. So, he contacted Anthony Perkins and they sat down together and they looked at his murder games and a number of other different things as well, his treasure hunts and more. And they came up with the concept and Herbert Ross thought it was great, but he said, you have put it in a home in Long Island. That's boring. I don't wanna go to Long Island. I wanna go to France. So they moved the setting to Europe. And that is the beginning of the movie, The Last of Sheila. The Last of Sheila is all about somebody who invites their friends onto a boat to play games every day. And they're devious, mean hostile games and all of the games that they play in the movie, the treasure hunts, the puzzles, they're all based on the puzzles and games that Stephen Sondheim designed. Now, you wouldn't know that watching the movie, you would just look like it's just some crazy plot, but it's all from his life. The game of "Hostilities". The murder game and the Treasure hunts he did with Anthony Perkins. But that's not the end of it. Then in the early 1980s, Stephen Sondheim was profiled in Games Magazine. And if you don't know Games Magazine, it was, it's kinda like the preeminent US magazine for people who love games and puzzles. It started in 1977 and it still exists with a different title today. Stephen Sondheim had five pages in Games Magazine just interviewing him, not about his shows, but about the antique puzzles on his walls, about his treasure hunts, about the murder game. And they invited him to take over one of the pages to design his own puzzle. And he did. And Donald, what was it based on?

Donald Feltham: The Murder Game.

Barry Joseph: You got it. Yep. So he not only made a print version of the murder game, he created a narrative. You're in Stephen Sondheim's house and he invites you and all of the narrative is about being at his house in the 1960s. And all of the people you're told you're playing with were all the people who actually played it. And when it came time for Stephen Sondheim to tell Games Magazine the solution so they could print it, he said I can't do that. No. It'll be able to come to my parties anymore. And they said, but we can't do that. We don't publish puzzles without answers. So he acceded to it. And he put that in so people can now do a print version of it with an answer. Two more things to add. In the 1970s, Herbert Ross asked Stephen Sondheim to explain to him how he could throw the party himself and Herbert Ross' memorabilia and collections are in Boston, I think university in Boston, and that, I think it's around six pages of typed instructions from Stephen Sondheim are available. So we have in Stephen Sondheim's own words exactly how someone else can throw the party. And it's smart, it's brilliant, and also has all sorts of funny stuff in it as well. And yet it keeps giving. We talked about Sunday in the Park with George earlier Donald, in our conversation. And one of the best known songs from that show, and perhaps one of Stephen Sondheim's best known songs overall is "Finishing the Hat". Which is a song in which the main character of the show, George is painting. And we don't realize until the last moment of the song the hat he's painting is just in his mind and he's creating it through the painting itself. And he is lost in this flow state and he's so lost in the flow state that his romantic interest Dot is gonna leave him. And we're watching him disconnect for the world because he's in such a creative flow state. When you're sitting in the audience watching that, you are thinking, you're watching someone commenting on the creative act. Maybe it's telling us something about Sondheim, maybe it's just about not just painters, but creativity in general. And what Stephen Sondheim was actually writing about was that flow state in 1965 when he was designing The Murder Game. He has spoken about this in interviews on NPR, about what he wanted and with PBS once with, Lin Manuel Miranda, that what he wanted to capture was that moment of creativity. It didn't matter what you were making, that when you're in it, you're just lost in that state. So when we're watching George singing, "Finishing the Hat", and we're thinking about what it's saying about creativity in general. It is, but it's also specifically Stephen Sondheim, remembering a time that he was designing a parlor game for his friend that he loves.

Donald Feltham: If anybody hasn't seen The Last of Sheila they should definitely watch it. It's an all star cast of people from 1973, including Diane Cannon and Raquel Welsh and James Mason and Richard Benjamin and Joan Hackett. It's a fantastic cast and it's, I loved it. I actually saw it in theaters when it first came out. I was merely 12 years old at the time. And I saw it twice in theaters 'cause I was a big mystery fan.

Barry Joseph: Oh, I'm impressed.

Donald Feltham: Yeah. What I loved about it was the solution and the fact that, as you point out in the book, which I don't wanna give away, but the solution is right there in front of you the whole time. It's one of those things where you can solve it from the very beginning of the movie if you only know what you're looking for.

Barry Joseph: That's right.

Donald Feltham: And that's one of the things that I love about what Sondheim and Perkins did, is that it's a murder mystery, treasure hunt murder game. But the ultimate solution is actually right in front of your face the whole time. And if you know what you're looking for it's right there the whole time.

Barry Joseph: And without giving anything away, what I'll say is what he does in that movie he does throughout many of his puzzles, and it's one of my favorite design features. Stephen Sondheim has an invisible pattern behind all the solutions, which you don't even know what you're looking for. And then you find that solution. Once you find that solution, you start seeing it in multiple locations, you get reaffirmed that you're on the right track, but then suddenly something is off and the thing that is off is what directs you to the answer. That's a really fun style of puzzle. Right. Looking for a pattern, finding the pattern, finding the exception and the exception directs you to the final answer.

Donald Feltham: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So the last thing I want to touch on is the physical puzzles. Specifically the jigsaw puzzles.

Barry Joseph: Yay.

Donald Feltham: And how the jigsaw puzzles came about. And is work with a particular puzzle company that were creating the puzzles for him. So talk a little bit about when they started, when the jigsaw puzzles started. 'Cause they became opening night gifts.

Barry Joseph: That's right.

Donald Feltham: And I know everybody's thinking, oh, the jigsaw puzzle's not that big of a deal. We're talking about Stephen Sondheim here. These are very difficult jigsaw puzzles.

Barry Joseph: Yeah, I'll start with the end. I've had the opportunity to put a few dozen of them together because I know people who have collections and they let me have the opportunity to try and put them together so I could write about the experience. Oh my gosh. They're brutal. These are brutal. And they're designed to be as challenging as possible. They take all the things that you usually bring into a jigsaw puzzle solving experience, and they throw it in your face. For example, when I usually do a jigsaw puzzle, the first thing I do is I find all the edge pieces, right? That's the first thing everybody does. How do you know it's an edge piece? 'cause it's flat on one side, but not the others. This company's called Stave puzzles. They're in Vermont. They make these beautiful wooden puzzles and they know you're gonna do that. So not only is the outside not gonna be flat, there's gonna be flat parts on the inside, right? Sometimes the flat go face to face with another piece. Sometimes there's a space between them. You don't expect there to be spaces between them. It goes on and on that. And so when I was solving the puzzle. Which aren't that many pieces, like maybe 45. I would get a half hour in, maybe 45 minutes in, and I would still have six pieces left. And I still couldn't figure out what to do next. I can't, like, how am I looking at six pieces and I still can't figure out what to do. So smart. So Stephen Sondheim first learned about stave, I think from Into the Woods. Marty Granoff said he learned about them and made him a present, I think it was for that show. And then the next show that I believe Stephen Sondheim gave, an opening night gift to, I think was for Putting it Together. That was the off-Broadway production that came over from England, which if you don't know, the cover has jigsaw pieces in it. So that was a natural fit. He was gonna give people a jigsaw puzzle that was the poster of their show, which has jigsaw puzzles in it, right? But he not only gave them the cover of their show, each one was personalized. So your initials Donald or DF. So your poster would look different than mine. 'cause when you put your pieces together, there would be spaces inside that would spell out D and F. Mine would spell out B and J. So they were customized because they had the show to cover and they were personalized just for you. And after he did that for Putting It Together, I think that's the only thing he did for the rest of his life through the last production of Company, which was actually not given till the few weeks after he'd passed away in November of 2021. And so you can go through almost every show from Putting It Together through Company. All the revivals in New York City, all the new shows, and you can find a jigsaw puzzle made in wood with the picture of that show and the initials of the person who received it.

Donald Feltham: Plus the fact that the rest of the puzzle, the puzzles are not interchangeable so that all the different people in Company the rest of the pieces don't match. Each one of them is completely customized so that even though they're all the same image. The pieces are not interchangeable between puzzles.

Barry Joseph: Because they're made by hand and that's why they're all made by hand. Stave is, they're expensive puzzles, but yeah, they are greatly admired. It's aficionados.

Donald Feltham: Yeah. I mean it was fascinating and they also, I think you also talk about the fact that, 'cause one of the tricks obviously when you're doing jigsaw puzzles is you're always looking for the overlap of colors and overlap of objects within the picture. So you can tell where pieces go and they purposely look for where lines are between different things in the picture, and they make sure that's where they have a line cut on the piece so that you cannot see an overlap on the piece. They purposely do everything they possibly can to make this difficult.

Barry Joseph: So when I spoke with people who received them for one show or maybe even multiple shows, they always talked about how that was so Steve, that's how his mind worked. And of course he wanted to give you as a gift, not just something that reflected you. 'cause it had your initials in it and the show you did together. But this way that he wanted to engage with you, what's my book called? Matching Minds with Sondheim. That was not by accident. When you are playing someone's puzzle, you have to get into their mind. And so being able to get a jigsaw puzzle that was, procured by Stephen Sondheim, designed for you, is inviting you to get into his mind and have that kind of relationship. So even though he's now passed away, we still can have that relationship with him through playing his puzzles and playing his games, and hearing the voices of the kind of people I spoke with. You get to experience them in the book, but I love getting to hear them right in my ear, and that's why I was inspired to create a podcast. So my podcast, Matching Minds with Sondheim takes 30 of those hours of all those interviews that I have permission to reuse and let you listen to them. And then, meet them for you for the first time with other people who are hearing them for the first time, who have expertise on whatever the topic is. Jigsaw puzzles, escape rooms, theater, and then analyzing them. So I welcome you to come check out my podcast as well. If you wanna hear those voices in your ear like you're hearing me and Donald right now.

Donald Feltham: I highly recommend you check out the podcast. Along with purchasing the book. It is called Matching Minds With Sondheim: the Puzzles and Games of the Broadway Legend from Bloomsbury. It is out now. Wherever you purchase books, I'm gonna include links, a link to MatchingMindsWIthSondheim.com, where you can find out more about Barry's book. You can purchase the book, you can find the podcast. It's a one-stop shop on the internet where you can find all these things to get the book. Find out more about Barry. Barry, thank you so much. This is such a terrific book, and I think it's an ideal holiday gift because especially the second half of the book where you can throw your own murder game. You can do it all yourself if you want, or your own treasure hunt. Although I don't see people running around New York to the extent that he had people running around New York. Unless you are wealthy enough to hire a whole troop of a whole fleet of limousines to cart people around. But anyway..

Barry Joseph: Donald, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to be with you today and be here with your listeners. And all I wanna do is say what I usually say at the end of all my podcasts. Someone is on your side. Especially when Matching Minds with Sondheim.

Donald Feltham: Do we really need another book on Stephen Sondheim?