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Books
Matching Minds With Sondheim: The Puzzles and Games of the Broadway Master (2024)
By near-universal consensus, Stephen Sondheim was the greatest musical theater composer of his generation—celebrated, among other things, for the wit, sophistication, and intricacy of shows from West Side Story to Sunday in the Park with George. A less well-known avenue for his brilliant creativity was his lifelong fascination with designing and constructing intricate puzzles and games: from treasure hunts and crossword puzzles to parlor and board games.
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This is Daria Begley, long-time NYC correspondent for the Sondheim Society. This photo is from last May, at Below 54, preparing to listen to @melissa_errico_fairymom perform songs from her #Sondheim album.
Actually, this is a reflection of Daria in a phone.
The phone is an old Motorola Droid that she won at the American Museum of Natural History in 2011, at a fundraiser for Friends in Deed.
The cocktail party event (before dinner accompanied by Errico as well) was a treasure hunt designed by Stephen Sondheim: A Little Jurassic Treasure Hunt, which took place in the dinosaur Halls.
Daria`s team won the Hunt and, along with a number of other prizes, got to take home this phone, which no longer functions... but, OH, the stories it could tell!
#treasurehunt
In observance of the third anniversary of the passing of Stephen Sondheim, I am starting this video series (that will last about a year) to share some of the gifts he brought into the worlds... literally gifts he gave as Broadway Opening Night presents. (click in the bio for the full YouTube playlist, including a 27 minute playthrough with narration of this one).
From 1994 (Passion) through Company (2021), Stephen Sondheim looked to Stave, a Vermont-based jigsaw manufacturer, to produce personalized puzzles as his opening night gifts.
For each show, the poster was turned into a thick-pieced, deviously complex wooden jigsaw puzzle, each gift personalized with the initials of the recipient designed into the puzzle pieces as an additional challenge and delight.
I have been fortunate enough to have been provided access to one of the largest collections of these puzzles, through playwright @michaelmitnick, playwright, songwriter, and Sondheim aficionado.
In these videos I will share full-length videos of my building these jigsaws, explaining their brilliant designs, as well as speed-up videos like this one. To prevent spoilers I will avoid stating the name of the show and use, instead, its year of production. This one is from 2002.
These puzzles represent Sondheim`s life-long interest in using puzzles to create moments of awe and clarity. I hope some of that comes across in the viewing.
#sondheim @sondheimphotos @sondheimletters @stavepuzzles #jigsawpuzzle
This is it! The cover for Matching Minds with Sondheim has been finalized. Thank you all for your tremendous feedback that helped it to get to this point. I hope you love it as much as I do, and I love that we did it together. Let me know in the comments.
(And yes, that whole "Sept 2025" thing. My publisher was purchased this year and having growing pains. As a result, they are pushing back publication from May to Sept. But trust me, I think it`s still going to be worth the wait.)
As I shared last month, Andrew Parr (@lego_nerd_puzzles) wrote not one but TWO articles about the Sondheim auction, for Games WORLD OF PUZZLES magazine. The first second is out NOW.
This one also includes a number of my photos but this time focuses on what happened once I brought home Andrew’s winnings - hundreds upon hundreds of game and puzzle magazines - and shared the collection with him over Zoom to triage this remarkable collection.
(and yeah, that is a photo of me with Will Shortz delivering some gifts from Andrew’s collection…)
NOT TO BE MISSED. Check out an excerpt below:
It was decided that Barry, a thorough documentarian, would unpack the entire lot while I watched on a Zoom call. During the call, we would catalog every item from each box so I could decide what I wanted to keep, and which items could be gifted, sold, or donated to a museum.
The unboxing day arrived. We connected online and I eagerly watched from Barry’s phone, which was held on an angle tripod so I could see into the boxes. And the first hour we unpacked two boxes which contained the following…
#Sondheim #games #puzzles #auctions #theRightPlaceattheRightTime
If you subscribe to David Benkof’s Broadway Maven newsletter (and if you don’t, then you should) then today you saw that he worked with two crossword constructors to build a fun Broadway-themed puzzle (link in bio).
As he wrote: “Crossword puzzles have long been a popular pastime among musical theater people, and several prominent Broadwayniks are published cruciverbalists (puzzle constructors), including Hugh Wheeler, Richard Maltby, Jr. (who is a MARQUEE subscriber!) and The Master himself. Barry Joseph, author of the forthcoming Matching Minds with Sondheim, even told me that had Sondheim "not had any achievements in musical theater, his passing in 2021 would still have noted mention in The New York Times obituaries" for his role in promoting cryptic crosswords in America.”
And I stand by my comment!
sondheim crosswords
I had an amazing time today at the @museumofbroadway checking out all of the Sondheim goodness sprinkled throughout. The highlight of course was the Sondheim Anagram Puzzle, designed by @davidkwong, to taut Sondheim passion for word puzzles. I write about it in my book. (I greatly appreciated being reminded by the docent to not leave before finding the bonus puzzle.) #wordpuzzles #anagrams #museums
A lot in one photo! This is me right now with Richard Maltby, Jr. I had just given him from @lego_nerd_puzzles (Andrew Parr) one of Stephen Sondheim’s issues of Games magazines from 2021 (that Andrew acquired at auction last June, and includes Andrew’s interview with Sondheim). In the photo we are holding the CURRENT issue of Games, open to the page showing Andrew’s current article about that auction, featuring photos from me, including one of me with Richard, together at the auction last June… which just happens to be a half block from the auction house itself!
The near final draft of the cover just came in. Loving it! Thank you all for your fantastic feedback, pushing it along towards a state of awesome.
The dice are back, as is a new blackwing pencil (in tribute to Sondheim`s preferred implement) and a cover dissolving into jigsaw pieces.
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Matching Minds with Sondheim is a journey into this rich but largely unmapped aspect of the composer’s creative life, illuminating how Sondheim’s playful designs delivered moments of clarity and connection for his friends and colleagues. For the first time, this book offers an enthralling tour of what Sondheim described as his “puzzler’s mind,” helping readers to better understand the man, his work, and—if they accept the challenge—themselves.
Gaming expert and theater fan Barry Joseph draws from over eighty years of Sondheim’s activities, collecting his extremely rare and never-publicly-seen puzzles and game designs, scores of original interviews with the celebrity friends who played them, deep dives into Sondheim-related archives from around the country, and analysis from both puzzle designers and theater professionals from around the world.
Matching Minds will do more than describe Sondheim’s work: It will allow readers to match minds with the maestro by attempting to solve Sondheimian puzzles and bring Sondheimian games into their own homes.
Reactions from early readers:
“Matching Minds does justice to a man who was good at having fun. Readers will have an absolute blast with this book.”
“An essential read for anyone who wants to understand what made this creative genius tick.”
Follow the latest on the book at MatchingMindswithSondheim.com and on Instagram.
Making Dinosaurs Dance: A Toolkit for Digital Design in Museums (2023)
“A wonderful guide to the kind of agile, experimental, responsive operational strategies needed in the museum of the future.” — Elizabeth Merritt, Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums, American Alliance of Museums
Making Dinosaurs Dance takes the reader behind the scenes to learn how the American Museum of Natural History innovates visitor digital engagement, highlighting design techniques used both there and at museums around the world. Based on my six years at the landmark institution that inspired the Night at the Museum franchise, the book introduces The Six Tools of Digital Design – user research, rapid prototyping, public piloting, iterative design, youth collaboration, and teaming up – then applies them through case studies across a range of topics.
Read more here.
Friday is Tomorrow, or The Dayenu Year (2022)
Chronicles from the NYC Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive
“Stories like Joseph’s suggest we are a lot better than we think we are.” —Micki McElya, author of The Politics of Mourning
“Compulsively readable” —James Loney, columnist
Friday is Tomorrow, or The Dayenu Year is a true story of learning to grieve and thrive during the first year of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Within the first month of the lock-down, the author loses his father to the disease and then, soon after, his job. Through the support of his family, friends, and community, Friday is Tomorrow tells the uplifting story of how one man learns to maintain traditions in a time of uncertainty while reaching for his dreams.
At times moving, at times humorous, the ups and downs of this New Yorker were originally penned (quite literally, with a physical pen) for Columbia University’s NYC Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive. Edited together for the first time, Friday is Tomorrow is more than just an opportunity to read one person’s struggle with the world wrought by the recent pandemic.
It is an invitation to take the time and space you need to consider and better understand your own story.
Learn how to get your own copy, download a free sample, and more at FridayisTomorrow.com.
Seltzertopia: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary Drink (2018)
“Of the thousands of books written about seltzer water, this is by far my favorite–especially the part that’s about me.” –Mel Brooks
Based on more than fourteen years of original research and interviews, the extraordinary story of this ordinary drink can finally be told.
Learn where to get your own copy, watch videos of presentations, follow the book tour and more at Seltzertopia.com.
© Copyright 2023 – Barry Joseph