"Divided into teams of five, the guests filed into four limousines. They'd been given maps of the city, and objects including string, pins, and scissors, as well as a piece of advice. "Keep talking to each other," their host had told them. "Do not try to solve these things individually." Sondheim, at thirty-eight, had already written the lyrics for "West Side Story" and "Gypsy," but he had not yet revolutionized the American musical with his dense, urbane scores for "Company," "Follies,""
"They planted envelopes around town: under a park bench, behind the pins in a bowling alley. Perkins had a cache of leftover campaign posters for Eleanor Clark French, a local politician who had run unsuccessfully for Congress a few years earlier, and the two men hung them in strategic locations, to give the players visual hints that they were on the right track."
Stephen Sondheim balanced a celebrated musical career with a passion for designing crosswords and elaborate, logic-based treasure hunts. He organized citywide puzzles that required teamwork, maps, simple tools, and carefully planted clues. For a 1968 Halloween hunt he and Anthony Perkins hid envelopes under benches and behind bowling pins and used leftover campaign posters as visual markers. Guests received explicit instructions to collaborate and follow auditory and visual cues. Sondheim had already authored lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy and later became known for dense, urbane musical scores.
Read at The New Yorker
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