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This past Saturday evening I spent a very nice hour and change talking with Stephen Sondheim.

Since I started writing the cryptic crosswords for The Sondheim Review a few years ago, we have exchanged emails on a handful of occasions, generally about the puzzles. These exchanges have always been polite and cordial. A while ago, I learned that a local regional theater, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, would be producing a revival of Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along, directed by John Doyle. This is also where the recent Broadway revival of Company originated, so I think there's a similar expectation that this will move to NYC. I suspected that Sondheim would be in town for it at some point, so I wrote him and mentioned that if he was in fact going to be around, I'd like to invite him over for dinner and a boardgame or something if his schedule permitted. He said he'd love to, to call him Steve, and we'd figure something out as time drew nearer.

As it turned out, he was only going to be in for one day, seeing a preview performance and meeting the director after. But if I liked, we could meet for drinks beforehand? I managed somehow to clear my schedule and said sure, that'd be great. Cell phone numbers were exchanged.

All of which, I should mention, just felt very surreal. I showed up at the appointed time at the swanky cocktail lounge of a hotel in Cinci, where Sondheim was with a group of older, well-heeled producer types. I sort of hovered by the table, until one of the ladies noticed me and said "oh, you must be Mark!". Sondheim introduced me around, and then announced to the group that he and I were going to head to the bar for a private chat. First though, he excused himself to the loo. When he was gone, the older lady turned to me and said "You're Mark who writes the puzzles, right? He's a HUGE fan of yours." Whoooosh, straight down the rabbit hole.

Then he got back, and we sat at the bar and talked. I was afraid it was going to be polite and awkward, but in fact it was a warm, engaged, and interesting conversation, during which we both laughed a lot. In no particular order, we talked among other things about movies, puzzles, Merrily, St. Paul's cathedral, and things that made us cry for reasons other than sadness. He told a mildly smutty anecdote about Arthur Miller and Mia Farrow, and then got embarrassed and apologized for being a name-dropper. He was very interested in hearing about the MIT Mystery Hunt, and he talked about various puzzle-events that he had devised. At one point he asked if I'd wanted to be an artist when I was a kid, and I said no, I'd wanted to be a magician, and that still shows up in my work: a fascination with the hidden structure behind visual or written effects, revelations, themes, etc. He said he'd first wanted to be a magician too, and that he knew "we had a lot of the same DNA". Whoooooosh.

And finally time was up, and he rejoined his group as their ride to the theater showed up. I was invited to join them, but I'd driven myself, so declined. Handshakes, hugs, "talk again soon"s. And that was that.

If I'm a little gushy and self-indulgent in describing this, I can't apologize for it. I loved every single second. I've given some thought over the last few months to why being in touch with or meeting this particular person meant as much to me as it clearly did. Sure, he's world-famous in the field that I'm in, but celebrity really doesn't mean much to me; I've met and/or worked with more than a few celebs over the years, and I'm in no way prone to being star-struck or automatically impressed. I think what it comes down to is this: when I think about how I approach projects that matter to me, puzzles or designs or whatever, and I think about what I try to bring to bear on them -- a deference to the material, an appreciation for craftsmanship, attention to how every detail fits together and an intolerance for shoddiness -- I think about the material I was listening to when I was first figuring out how I could work and what I could aspire to, and realize where I got those things. Artistically speaking, anyhow, Sondheim was the Great Teacher in my life. It was nice, if not to thank him for that in so many words, at least to be able to shake his hand.

I just got back from Texas, where I designed a production of The Wizard of Oz in Fort Worth. It seems like when I talk about work it's usually bitching, so I thought I'd share a nice moment as a change of pace:

The stage is a 3/4 thrust, which means the 1100-seat audience wraps to the sides to an extent and there's no curtain in front. So you see the scenery when you walk in; there's no reveal. The Oz set is a big green deco unit structure with levels and bridges, and a yellow brick road (of course) weaving through it.

So the first public performance was yesterday morning for a bunch of school groups. As I walked into the theater, there was a kid of about 10 walking in right in front of me. He stopped and grabbed the arm of his classmate, and said "Ooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh....loooook at it!"

I never get to see my own work through eyes like that, so man, that made my day.

 Is anyone else as eye-rollingly amused as I am by the current TV commercial for Sprint? It's the one in which a guy introduces himself as Dan Hesse, the CEO of Sprint, and then conversationally mentions "The other day I looked up the word 'unlimited' in the dictionary..."

OK, I can believe the CEO of a giant corporation looking up, say, "usufruct", but "unlimited"? C'mon, really?

I do a show once or twice a year for a theatre in Dayton, OH, about an hour's drive from where I live. A familiar landmark at the halfway point has been the King of Kings statue rising unmajestically from a cement pond next to a megachurch. I've always thought of it personally as the "Drowning Jesus" and occasionally "Swiss Cheesus", but "Touchdown Jesus" and "Big Butter Jesus" are also common monikers.



Apparently, God finally noticed it last night, and expressed his opinion with an Old Testament-style lightning bolt:

www.youtube.com/watch

Sic transit gloria mundi.

 Last night I attended an awards ceremony in which various theatre productions and practitioners from the Ohio/Kentucky/Indiana tristate area were to be honored for exceptional work during the past theatre season. Though I've done a little more work locally than I have in past seasons (usually the bulk of my projects in a year are for theaters in other cities, but the economy being what it is causes ever more belt-tightening in my usual clients), none of my work had been nominated for this event. Many friends and colleagues were up for things, so I was happy to go anyhow.

At dinner beforehand, my credit/debit card was declined. Oops. So, I'm broke, at least until someone gets around to paying me for something. Putting it in perspective, I'm owed money for projects past and ongoing, it's just a bit of a waiting game now, and things should be stabilized again soon. Still, that kind of thing always really depresses me, and makes me question what the hell I think I've been doing with my life.

The awards ceremony was nice, though I wasn't in the best mood for it. Then, at the end of the evening, they gave five "MVP" awards to people whose body of work over the season, rather than a specific production, have been considered especially noteworthy. Usually these are given to directors or producers who work all over the place, or patrons or arts supporters who have been especially generous. Unlike the other awards, there are no nominations for these, so no one knows where they're going.

I was absolutely stunned to receive one. As I say, a lot of my work is for places away from home, so I don't really imagine  myself to have a local profile. I try to do work I'm pleased with, and to make the various directors I work with happy, but I never really think much notice is taken beyond that. So anyway, it was a very pleasant surprise, and I got a nice little plaque thing and a baseball cap which I'll never, ever wear.

It's a really bizarre sensation to both rue your career choice and be honored for your body of work in the same evening.

Sunday night before last, getting some sleep after Mystery Hunt wrapped up, I had an odd dream. In it, we were substituting a "bring something to HQ"-type puzzle for something in an early round (we'd never be posting puzzles after the Hunt had already started, of course, that's how I knew I had to be dreaming...)

Anyhow, the name of it was "Reality Check". The flavor text was something like "because not everyone gets to spend a long weekend doing puzzles" and the gist of the thing was "for your team with N members, bring us a cashable check made out to the Red Cross for N/2 dollars to get this answer".

I woke up wondering what the reaction to something like that would have been in real life. Cool? Obnoxious? A logistical nightmare (though no more of one than some other tasks perhaps)? I really don't know.

Back from MIT, where with the other members of Beginner's Luck I was responsible for creating the 2010 MIT Mystery Hunt. I was very, very pleased with the reception the Hunt got. Many people have listed it as a favorite Hunt, and I've read or received many kind remarks on the Hunt in general or my contributions in particular from people whose opinions I value (you know who you are).

I got behind on actual work projects leading up to the Hunt, with the unfortunate result that I've had to immediately plunge chin-deep into the comparatively silty waters of real life and am already feeling a bit crazed trying to get caught up. My relative ambivalence to design projects currently has had me musing on why positive reactions to something like the Hunt or my Labor Day puzzles seem to make me happier than positive reactions to my scene design work (aka "real job"). In the latter case, I'm as susceptible to compliments on my work as anyone is, I guess. That is, I appreciate it when someone takes the trouble to make a kind remark about some show I've designed, and I try to respond to such graciously. That kind of thing just doesn't land the same way with me though. If I personally feel like I've done a good job on a design (which I almost never do without some distance and separation), and someone else seems to think so, great. If I feel like my work has been so-so, that doesn't make me dismiss someone else's positive reaction as worthless or stupid, but it doesn't mean that much to me or change my own mind.

I'm thinking it has to do with relating to the audience. On any work that I do, be it design, puzzle construction, writing, or whatever, I try to do it with a level of craftsmanship that I would appreciate seeing in someone else's work. Maybe I think a puzzle audience responds to that more than a theatre audience? Certainly if I were to identify myself with a group that's similar to me in temperament and interests, it's very much more the puzzle crowd than the random assortment of strangers that constitute a typical audience. So I guess it gratifies me more to imagine having pleased or engaged or surprised or delighted someone more likely to be in my circle of friends (even if a stranger) than someone with whom I may or may not have anything in common.

Anyway, all of that is very far afield of what I meant to write about, which was just to list my specific contributions to the Hunt (aside from a lot of the story and structure development) for anyone who might be interested. Solutions to these should be posted soon. Thanks again to those who've been kind enough to comment on some of these already.

1952 Witch Hunt Meta and Supplementary Info
1871 Jules Verne Meta and Supplementary Info
1710 First Hunt Meta

Banner Headline - 2010
Close Encounterclockwise - 2009
Side by Side by Side - 2000 (with David Shukan)
Picture Puzzle 2 - 1983
100% Reliable - 1952
Temptations - 1952 (with Craig Kasper)
Absolute Power - 1952
Chatterbox - 1903 (idea by Nathan Fung)
Tower House - 1871
Master of the World - 1871
Correspondence - 1871
Around the World in 80 Days - 1871
The Arena - 1804
Crossed Swords - 1752
Ad Infinitum - 1710
Bulls and Cows - 1710
Don't Let Me Down - 1710 (with David Shukan)

Additionally, I contributed to
Confirmed Machine 925 - 2010 (by David Shukan) (illustrations)
and
Sharp Senses - 1926 (by Mike Sylvia) (grid puzzle)
and graphics for various other puzzles.

Oh! And the coin design:



(The reverse is similar but with an extra "0" making "300", the Roman numerals reading counterclockwise, and with the text in the band replaced by a list of all the years visited during the Hunt.)

A few random notes:

Least Solved (Surprising) - Close Encounterclockwise. Testing on this led me to believe that the cryptographic portion was fairly tractable, but only one team forward solved it (God bless you).

Least Solved (Unsurprising) - Side by Side by Side. The unfortunate placement of this large logic puzzle late in a round in which a lot was easily backsolvable virtually guaranteed that no teams would forward solve it. And yet one team did, and kudo-ed it.

Most Solved - Will wait for stats, but I'm pretty sure that every team that accessed Correspondence solved it.

Most Polarizing - The Arena. I've heard comments from people who really liked this a lot, and comments from people who want to maim me or worse. To the latter, I concede that gur yrggre sbezf fubhyq unir orra yrff nzovthbhf, ohg V gubhtug gung gur erthyne ernqvat bs gurz va beqre (sebag/evtug fvqr/gbc) jbhyq qvfnzovthngr. Mea culpa.

 Some of you will appreciate this more than others. I'm looking at you at you, T!.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDDHHrt6l4w

Just a quick note to my friends heading off to Brooklyn this weekend for the Crossword Tournament. Have Fun!