New Yorker: Stephen Sondheim, Puzzle Maestro

[mitchern]

Posted: 12/16/25 at 6:58am

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/12/22/stephen-sondheim-puzzle-maestro

I would LOVE to play some of these, though I feel like we play Hostilities here often. 

[John Adams]

Posted: 12/16/25 at 8:11am

Will Shortz (who wrote one of the forewards for the book), was the first person to make me aware of Sondheim's talent with puzzles. (FYI, the New Yorker article is behind a paywall, so it's unreadable for me. I'm just assuming that the article mentions, "Matching Minds with Sondheim: The Puzzles and Games of the Broadway Legend" by Barry Joseph).

Shortz is the former editor of Games magazine. I bought the magazine religiously, eventually buying a subscription. It was many years ago that I'd read about Sondheim's puzzle creativity in the magazine. Shortz even published one of Sondheim's crosswords.