Stephen Sondheim, Puzzle Maestro

On Halloween night, 1968, a flock of twenty eminent New Yorkers burst out of the door of Stephen Sondheim’s Turtle Bay town house. The group included the Broadway producer Harold Prince, the playwright Arthur Laurents, the composer Mary Rodgers, and the actors Lee Remick and Roddy McDowall. 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,” and “A Little Night Music.” In the meantime, he was plying one of his lesser-known talents: designing elaborate treasure hunts.