Book Report: Matching Minds with Sondheim

It's a book about Stephen Sondheim, focusing on his puzzles and games rather than on the stuff he's most famous for, theater. Of course, it's the puzzle-y and game-y parts that I'm interested in, because I played The Game, a variety of puzzle hunt in which teams drive around from puzzle to puzzle over the course of a weekend. Thanks to Scott "Puzzalot" Royer, I'd learned a bit about The Game's history—and Stephen Sondheim's name kept popping up. I even buckled down and used a microfiche reader at the library to read (and transcribe) a 1969 London Times article about Sondheim's puzzle hunts and games.

Matching Minds with Sondheim sums it up:

An exploration of all the vastly different, creative offshoots of Sondheim's Murder Game can seem to go on forever. … the Los Angeles moviegoer who watched [The Last of] Sheila in 1973, was inspired to design his own multicity scavenger hunt, which inspired Disney's 1980 film Midnight Madness, which inspired one of its moviegoers to create a similar game, which he eventually took to Microsoft, …

Everything I found out hinted that there was plenty more to know: Sondheim ran puzzly treasure hunts at friends' parties; he ran public treasure hunts for charities, he brought british-style cryptic crosswords to the US, he… Anyhow, this book gets into a lot of that. I'm glad I read it.

It was slow going for me. I think this book expected to be the second Sondheim bio read by a Sondheim fan, not necessarily knowledgable about games or puzzles. E.g., here's how Oscar Hammerstein is introduced in the book: "Hammerstein". I read that and thought "Oh, right, uh, I think he worked on Oklahoma! and some other stuff important enough that I'm going to smack my forehead that it slipped my mind over the years." On the other hand, noted board game expert Sid Sackson gets two pages of introduction. In a gathering of nerds, I'm probably not the biggest board game fan, but even I know about Sid Sackson. But if you expect your reader to be already-knowledgable about Sondheim's theater-stuff but new to gnarly games, allotting two pages for Sackson's introduction makes sense, as does assuming that the reader already knows Hammerstein mentored Sondheim and worked on The Sound of Music, how could you forget that? 😳

This book delivers the goods. E.g., there's a version of Sondheim's Murder Game puzzle as presented in Games Magazine. There are snippets of puzzles from later Sondheim hunts, albeit maybe just enough to get the flavor. Like, I tried solving a rebus and got nonsense—only to read on and find out the book just showed the top ⅓ of the puzzle. I, avid puzzler, was miffed: why only show the top bit? But this was probably sensible for the audience; most folks probably weren't trying to solve the puzzles they encountered in the book. No, really. I was kinda surprised to find an erratum in the fourth printing of the book, especially in a puzzle; shouldn't eagle-eyed puzzlers already have spotted+reported all of those? But of course, it makes sense if most readers aren't slowing down to solve the puzzles. (Also, that puzzle was a reprint of a cryptic crossword by Mark sHalpin; so you can bet that the truly serious puzzle-nerds probably chuckled "ah yes, I remember solving this delightful trifle back when it first appeared," instead of, like me, struggling through with nice-but-not-amazing cryptic crossword skills.)

It's kind of weird the way that celebrities keep popping up, but I guess it makes sense. If I wanted a puzzlehunt to involve a fax machine clue, I'd ask my friends to find out who had a fax machine they could loan out for the weekend. Same with Sondheim, except in his case, the friend was Stephen Fry‽ So random.

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2026-05-28T23:09:49.916380

I saw some chalk art on Irving St in #SanFrancisco on Sunday:

Demon hunter on a roller skates (accompanied by pet on skateboard) by Kal Zakzouk at 20th Ave.
Various pieces by Hazel, Noah, and perhaps others at 8th Ave.

sidewalk chalk art: zooming in on skateboarding pet. I'm not 100% sure whether it's a cat or dog. It's definitely sticking its tongue out tho

sidewalk chalk art: Probably the work of some kids with chalk and time on their hands. All such work is subject to interpretation but I think I see a heart and the outline of a small human (perhaps Noah?)

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2026-05-26T15:59:13.402276

Yet more #SanFrancisco sights:

Sidewalk chalk said "Fun this way" with an arrow pointing at the SF Muni Metro light rail Sunset Tunnel. Please don't seek fun in the Sunset Tunnel; dodging trains isn't fun for you or for Muni drivers. (A few steps further on, I saw that the "fun" had been actually behind the old weather station(?) shed on the other side of the tracks, probably much more obvious while it was happening than, say, the next morning.)
New ped xing signs+lights going in on Parnassus Ave. Several weeks back, I noted that more than a year after a truck hit a pedestrian at Parnassus+Stanyan, we were finally getting some speed humps, albeit shallow. Now I see that we're also getting some new signs with flashing lights… at a different intersection nearby, Hillway. Maybe those speed humps weren't meant to slow down trucks at Stanyan, but rather to help folks cross at Hillway? Anyhow, both of those intersections are pretty iffy; I don't like trying to cross at either of them. Kinda lookin' like SFMTA gave up on any safety improvements for Stanyan tho.
Families who park on Waller St. before walking to high school graduation ceremonies at Kezar Stadium next week might encounter this front porch goose in appropriate attire.

sidewalk chalk message promises "fun this way ↑" pointing down rail tracks that disappear around a bend into a hillside

shiny new signpost with not-yet-operational pushbutton hooked up to flashing lights by a Ped Xing sign with solar collector on top. not shown: the little cannisters holding bright flags which people carried across Hillway hoping that drivers would notice them. SFMTA was very quick to take down this guerilla safety equipment, though it's taking them several days to install the official stuff

front porch decorated with a porcelain(?) goose statue appropriately attired in a graduation robe, mortarboard hat, and carrying a little diploma

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2026-05-23T17:27:16.497715

I swear I notice things on my #SanFrancisco walks that aren't sidewalk chalk drawings sometimes. Not today, tho.

Baker St./Haight: There's a patch of sidewalk getting destroyed by tree roots. Somebody decorated it.

Fell St/Cole: Good Luck Circle, Bad Luck Circle. Except the Bad Luck "Circle" was pretty distorted (I edited one photo to trace it).

base of street tree. there's a wide-ish sidewalk cut around it but nevertheless, its roots are pushing up a couple of patches of sidewalk. someone decorated one patch of sidewalk with some geometric-ish patterns in chalk

patch of sidewalk decorated with some geometric-ish patterns in chalk

patch of sidewalk with some chalk drawings on it. there is a circle with the words 'good luck circle' (all caps) inside. There is a larger, more chaotic shape with the 'bad luck circle' (all caps) inside. Also a small stain, like maybe somebody spilled coffee? Gee, I hope that's not blood; that would make the Bad Luck Circle pretty grim

altered photo: I traced the bad luck 'circle' to highlight its non-circular-ness

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2026-05-19T17:04:07.374802

New-to-me sidewalk chalk #StreetArt by Kal Zakzouk at 20th Ave and Irving in #SanFrancisco this morning: a snack fan. She's eating an éclair. Since this is San Francisco, you have to wonder whether it's just an éclair or a reference to longtime SF street stencil artist Eclair Bandersnatch. Also in frame: barricades blocking cars away from 19th Avenue, which is still being repaved on weekends.

sidewalk chalk art: lady eating an éclair and sipping a canned beverage. There's some Chinese text which, alas, I don't understand well enough to enter

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2026-05-09T18:10:10.436173

Walking to the grocery store, I heard a couple of whistle blasts. I wondered: Ugh, is it ICE? I looked around, dredging up a todo-list from memory. Then I spotted the inspiration for the whistle. I was walking past a construction site. Those whistles weren't neighbors warning neighbors; the intended audience was just construction workers. A crane was hoisting some porta-potties, moving them to a place where a truck could drain them.

Whew.

Not ICE agents; just some full porta-potties. I'm not ashamed I mixed those up, though. Same aura.

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2026-05-04T15:05:47.891582

Things I saw walking in #SanFrancisco this morning:

New-ish Kal Zakzouk sidewalk chalk art on Irving St at 20th Ave: Lady blowing bubbles amongst baby-faced goldfish.
A stalled bus by the side of Lincoln Way. I'm no expert mechanic, but I think it ran out of tokens.
Setting up a crane on the very-steep Hillway Ave, tucking a lot of wooden blocks underneath the downhill bits.

sidewalk chalk art: lady sits cross-legged blowing bubbles while surrounded by hovering giant baby-faced goldfish

sidewalk chalk art: zooming in on one baby-faced goldfish (and a bit of the lady's elbow)

stalled bus pulled over by the side of the road. the bus' exterior is wrapped in ads for an 'AI App Builder'. See, the joke is that a lot of these AI companies meter their services as 'tokens' and it's a hassle when you run out. And buses used to use tokens. Hilarious, right? OK, maybe you had to be there

crane on a steep hill. Also a little bit of a forklift that's carrying around railroad-tie-sized blocks of wood, some of which are propping up bits of the crane to level it out

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2026-05-03T12:31:36.969562

Here are some photos of flowers in my neighborhood. Also, since my main social network Mastodon encourages me to post four pictures at a time, here is a photo of a nearby emergency water system control knob.

bright red faucet knob against a background of out-of-focus fern fronds

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2026-05-01T15:16:24.655374

I saw some more things on Sunday, but didn't post them then because Mastodon, my main social app, really wants me to post four images at a time. And I got distracted after posting the first batch. Anyhow.

More Kal Zakzouk chalk art: A lady disguised as a mama dinosaur feeds haunches of meat to a baby dinosaur. I claim that the lady's shoes are godzilloshes.
Chalk: Folks wrote some encouraging messages along the route of a footrace in Golden Gate Park.
A quiet street: Arguably not interesting enough to post, but Mastodon really wants me to post four images at a time so here ya go.

sidewalk with chalk art: a smiling lady in a kaiju suit tosses Flintstones-style meat bits to a cute baby dinosaur

sidewalk with chalk art: zooming in on the baby dino

Screen shot of group chat. I posted a pic of a quiet street scene with note "Ugh not sure how we can be expected to tolerate this". A--- replied: "When we were young, the word cloudy _meant_ something!"

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2026-04-28T15:04:32.382099

A couple of things I saw on my walk this morning in #SanFrancisco:

Some Kal Zakzouk sidewalk chalk art: A bicyclist on a bubbly bike.

An engineering marvel: The re-paving of 19^th Avenue

sidewalk chalk art: a bicyclist sits on a bike

street, normally a few lanes in each direction, but today traffic cones reduce it to one lane each; there is fresh asphalt, still soft enough to stick to your shoe if you walk on it, as it turns out

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2026-04-26T17:33:02.584697