Sondheim, Stephen. (1930–2021)
Stephen Sondheim's Crossword Puzzles from New York Magazine
New York: Harper Colophon Books. 1980. First. Exceedingly rare pristine copy of this important item of Sondheimiana. 8 x 10 inches (20.3 x 25.4 cm.). Rigid blue cardstock covers, white metal spiral binding. 60 pp. Small crease to rear lower cover, else a very fine, crisp and untouched example.Between April 1968 and July 1969, legendary Broadway composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim contributed 42 cryptic crosswords to New York magazine. Sondheim's reputation at this stage rested on his Tony-winning musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and the lyrics for two big hits - West Side Story and Gypsy. He was already a notable among the theatre world, but his apotheosis as an artist in the public eye was just around the corner. Sondheim had a lifelong love of games and puzzles, and - with his good friend, Psycho actor Anthony Perkins - was well-known for organising complex treasure hunts across New York City for their society friends. He would later go on to write the screenplay for a clever Hollywood murder mystery, The Last of Sheila, and a short-lived Broadway murder mystery, Getting Away with Murder
Dense crosswords, then, were right up Mr. Sondheim's alley. From April to July 1968, the puzzles were published weekly. This subsequently became fortnightly through to January 1969, and then increasingly intermittent until the schedule fell away completely. And with good reason: the composer was consumed with writing not one but two groundbreaking works. 1970's Company and 1971's Follies, which would define him as a master of the artform, and pave the way for the many masterpieces to follow.
These puzzles are not your typical crosswords. First, the clues are cryptic, and in a modified style from those who are more familiar with those found in the London or New York Times. Second, the puzzle itself is often a mental torture chamber that requires several logical leaps. For instance, one may have to solve the clue (e.g. "Do you want to hear? Sing, then see 'The Sound of Music'.") and then encode one's answer using a code found elsewhere in the puzzle and then, once you have found the decoded word, follow instructions in the puzzle to convert that word into the 'light' (the word to be entered into the diagram). Sometimes, even once the diagram is complete, there may be a further task, such as rearranging sections of the grid or picking out a hidden message therein.
It all sounds daunting...and it is. But at heart, these are just twists on standard cryptic crosswords, and Mr. Sondheim has a lovely introduction to help you on your way. It should be noted that, as Sondheim was an "early adopter" among Americans of these sorts of puzzles, many of the concepts were borrowed - one assumes with permission - from The Listener, the most famous British cryptic of its day. Acknowledgements are listed throughout the text.
This book is as much a time capsule as anything else, and the clues are obscure. Still, as Sondheim says in his introduction, there is nothing like the pleasure of holding a clue in your mind for minutes, or even hours or days, while the cogs start to turn in your mind. More to the point, as we accustom ourselves to a world that is painfully bereft of Sondheim's physical being, it is a pleasure to wallow in his mind. To grasp at how the cogs turned, and understand the way that his brain would construct a problem. It's no doubt similar to the way he was able to hammer out complex, apt lyrics and musical notes. This is the real legacy of these riddles.
This 1980 first edition is also the only edition, and it came spiral-bound, which was no doubt helpful for New York magazine's profit margin, but perhaps not great for the volume's longevity. Unmarked and fine copies are extremely uncommon. The smart introduction helped introduce the idea of cryptics to Americans who were largely unfamiliar with them, but they now provide helpful tools to get us started on puzzles that are historically out of our reach. 41 of the 42 original puzzles are included here, along with the answer key. The provision of the answers is truly a blessing; sometimes just quickly flipping over to squint at one single answer can bust through fifty years of dust and shadow. Some of the answers include notes as to how to arrive at the solutions. One single puzzle, entitled Un-American, is missing. This is apparently because its specific (baseball-related) theme became outdated between 1969 magazine publication and this volume, in 1980. In the pre-computer age, of course, 'gremlins' were tougher to catch, whether because the compiler was transmitting them by fax or some other technology, or just because of the vagaries of printing. Either way, there were unfortunate misprints in a small number of the original puzzles which made it difficult for solvers; these all appear to have been corrected for this collection. (22986)
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