A lot of analysis exhibits that doing psychological workout routines can thrust back dementia and the results of growing older, however can it really make you higher at your job? Whereas it’s arduous to think about the late musical theater virtuoso Stephen Sondheim needing any form of additional inventive stimuli, he in truth had a widely known love of stimulating puzzles and video games.
And he didn’t simply play them. The Tony-winning composer behind Broadway hits similar to Sweeney Todd, Firm, and a heartwarming ditty about presidential assassins additionally cultivated a facet hustle as a designer of cryptic crossword puzzles and a frequent host of recreation nights and scavenger hunts.
Barry Joseph, a recreation researcher and designer and an adjunct professor at New York College, occurred to note a couple of years in the past that nobody had documented Sondheim’s area of interest ardour in a complete method. So he determined to do it himself.
His new guide, Matching Minds With Sondheim (Bloomsbury, October 2025), attracts from eight a long time of Sondheim’s brain-teasing ventures. It contains a mixture of uncommon and infrequently seen recreation designs, archival analysis, and interviews with Sondheim contemporaries who performed alongside.
[Image: Bloomsbury]
Quick Firm lately caught up with Joseph to debate the guide, what impressed it, and what he hopes readers will acquire from making an attempt to match minds with a musical legend. The interview has been edited for size and readability.
You could have a background as a recreation designer and recreation researcher. How did you get excited by writing about Stephen Sondheim?
Sondheim handed away in November of 2021. Meaning March, 22, 2022, was his first birthday after he handed away. And my birthday is 2 days later. For a gift, my spouse bought me three Sondheim-related books . . . recognizing that I and lots of different Sondheim followers had been nonetheless in mourning for having misplaced our musical hero.
One was an educational guide that was a overview of all Sondheim exhibits, however from the attitude of postmodernism. That guide left me considering how fascinating it was to have a look at Sondheim by one lens. What different lenses may there be?
Then I learn Stephen Sondheim’s biography from the late ’90s by Meryle Secrest, which barely talked about him having something to do with puzzles and video games. It’s talked about right here and there, however in the index behind the guide, there’s nothing for video games and nothing for puzzles—which tells you a large number about how critically the subject was addressed.
And the third guide was James Lapine’s Placing It Collectively—the oral historical past of Sunday within the Park With George. Lapine had met Stephen Sondheim proper after Sondheim had his vital catastrophe Merrily We Roll Alongside. For individuals who don’t know, it was a present that lasted below two weeks and was utterly decimated by the critics, placing Sondheim in a really disagreeable way of thinking—a lot in order that when he met Mr. Lapine, he was speaking about leaving the world of musical theater.
Lapine requested him what he was going to do subsequent, and he mentioned, “Perhaps I’ll go into online game design.” That’s not what occurred! They ended up working collectively to do Sunday within the Park With George. Sondheim stored doing musical theater. The remaining is historical past, they usually by no means talked about it once more within the guide.
Me, as an adolescent who grew up within the late ’70s, early ’80s, enjoying my Intellivision, my Atari, my Apple II Plus pc, I learn that and questioned about Stephen Sondheim designing video video games as an alternative . . .
I bear in mind Intellivision being the center stepchild of online game consoles. Not too many individuals had Intellivision.
I used to be a type of individuals. I at all times preferred issues being exterior the field. . . . In any case, I learn that, and that blew my thoughts. I believed, “What’s Sondheim doing speaking about video games?” And I mentioned, “Is there one thing right here? Is there a subject right here? What’s the lens on Stephen Sondheim from a recreation perspective?”
Ludology is the research of video games. And so I believed, “Can one take a look at Stephen Sondheim from a ludological lens?” And on the time, I didn’t know if there’d be a lot of something. However after only a few weeks of some fast Google searches, what I discovered was that there have been numerous fascinating, attractive tidbits.
He was the founding puzzle editor of New York journal in 1968. He created a cryptic crossword puzzle as soon as per week. His solely Hollywood-produced film, The Final of Sheila, a homicide thriller, includes all types of devious puzzles and video games.
And I stored coming throughout these different mentions of individuals speaking about going to his home for recreation nights. And there was an interview in Video games journal in 1983. There’s a bunch of his little tidbits right here and there. After which the remainder of it I discovered irresistible.
So you discover all these breadcrumbs, publicly identified info right here and there, and notice there’s no bigger physique of labor that has compiled all this?
I realized sufficient to know that there was one thing there, and that it wasn’t ready for somebody simply to jot down about. As a result of if it was, it could’ve been written.
Did you discover a second or many moments the place his love of making these puzzles knowledgeable his inventive work in a very particular method?
The final chapter within the guide is an evaluation of all of his exhibits, it from a playful language. The place are puzzles and video games within the exhibits? The place are they within the construction of the exhibits, and the place do they present up within the course of of making the exhibits?
And when you begin taking this lens at his theatrical work, you see it in every single place. The tip of Sunday within the Park With George is a second the place this portray that we’ve been watching constructed on the stage instantly comes into focus. And it’s one which we all know the viewers has some prior data of—they count on to see a sure one thing. Instantly, all of it occurs in that second when all of the items all click on collectively.
It’s these moments that Sondheim usually talked about, the place you’re forming order out of chaos. And that’s basically a jigsaw puzzle being constructed.
And I’m now fascinated by Merrily We Roll Alongside, which you talked about earlier. It’s instructed backwards. That feels prefer it’s its personal puzzle.
Give it some thought from the viewers’s perspective, proper? When you’re watching one thing by which the impact occurs earlier than the trigger, you must maintain it in your thoughts. And while you’re trying, it’s like a The place’s Waldo? What’s going to be the factor that prompted that factor to occur? After which while you see it, it connects collectively. Sondheim didn’t write the guide of Merrily, however I at all times questioned if that by some means influenced it.
And so we see it all through the exhibits, within the buildings of the exhibits, in the way in which that video games and puzzles are used, and typically within the strategy of how they developed.
What if a reader needs to select up your guide—who isn’t essentially tremendous into puzzles or a hardcore puzzle doer? You could have the puzzles within the guide. Would the informal puzzle particular person discover these sorts of puzzles difficult?
Let me reply your query in a roundabout method. . . . After I speak about all of his video games and puzzles, I speak about three explicit values. The primary is the precept of generosity. The second is the precept of playfulness. And the third is the precept of mentorship.
Generosity signifies that I’m right here that can assist you have an interesting time. I’m right here to make you be ok with your self—not simply be ok with how good I’m. And so it means creating alternatives to assist individuals alongside the way in which. Serving to alongside the way in which connects with the mentorship, which is constructing the scaffolding to assist individuals remedy the puzzles. And playfulness is simply making all of it enjoyable.
You talked about that your spouse purchased you three Sondheim books, so it’s essential to have been a fan earlier than you began scripting this. When did you uncover your love of Broadway?
I’m laughing as a result of I’m in my room . . . and in my closet is a set of Playbills that return to the mid-Eighties. I can’t even depend what number of are right here. I grew up on Lengthy Island. My mother liked musical theater, and it was a factor we regularly did as a household.
I realized very early on that I liked what it meant to be in an viewers for a musical. I liked the magic that was created on the stage. And extra importantly, I liked the feelings that it introduced out in me.
