Many years ago, Games magazine ran a feature article about Stephen Sondheim and his passion for puzzles. His home was stuffed with mechanical puzzles, we were told. He was instrumental in the introduction of cryptic crosswords to this country, and he would regularly run puzzle parties for his friends. An example was included right there in the magazine — a complex bit of business that was like an extra-puzzly version of a murder mystery game night.

I was a teenage puzzle lover at the time (or maybe not even yet a teenager), and I was riveted. Decades later, that article would directly inspire the third Winston Breen novel, The Puzzler’s Mansion, which was set at the home of a world-renowned musician, over the course of a weekend-long puzzle party.

A few years after the book came out, my friend Mark Halpin was due to come to New York for business — Mark teaches set design at the University of Cincinnati, and would annually come to New York with his grad students to lead them through a showcase of their work for interested professionals. As was generally the case for his visits, we made plans to have an Escape Room Day, hitting three or four good rooms around the city.

A week or so before that year’s visit, Mark sent me a message:

“I was wondering if your schedule next Tuesday would allow sticking around in the city another few hours. Thought we might grab a bite after escape rooms and then I’m having drinks with Sondheim and his companion at 5:30. Want to join us?”

Mark is a superb puzzle constructor, notably of variety cryptic crosswords of just the sort Sondheim helped introduce to America. One of Mark’s outlets, in fact, was The Sondheim Review — one puzzle in each issue themed after one of Sondheim’s shows (or, when Mark ran out of shows, specific songs). You can find an archive of these puzzles here.

One of the regular solvers of these puzzles was Sondheim himself, and in due time the two of them struck up a correspondence. This in turn led to a social meeting when Sondheim traveled to Cincinnati to see a revival of one of his shows. During this get-together was a moment I have described as my favorite thing to happen to anybody, including myself: After Sondheim excused himself for the men’s room, one of the other people in the gathering leaned towards Mark and said: “You should know he is a really big fan of yours.”

I mean, seriously.

Ultimately, we did not have drinks with Sondheim and his companion. Due to a change of plans, Mark and I instead went to his New York City apartment. It was, as promised, stuffed with puzzles, as well as two very forward standard poodles who assumed we were there to see them. We talked about escape rooms — Sondheim did them regularly, and he shut us up when we started talking too much about the ones we had visited that day; our recommendation was enough to put them on the list. Mark handed over a new cryptic for Sondheim to solve. And I presented him with a copy of The Puzzler’s Mansion, the book he had inspired. We chatted for a while more about puzzles in general — he accurately remembered themes of puzzles he had solved in the 1950s, and of solving them with “Lenny” — and then it was time to go. A rather unforgettable day.

Like so many others, I am pained to learned that he has passed away at the age of 91. I am very glad to have had the opportunity to cross his path.

A new puzzle hunt! Originally commissioned by the Mohonk Mountain House, “Wild Goose Chase” is a challenging ten-puzzle suite. It seems there is a mischievous goose running amok in a fancy resort, playing pranks such as switching around the seating arrangements in the wedding hall and inviting all his feathered friends into the dining room. Can you figure out how to stop him once and for all?

I couldn’t put “Wild Goose Chase” in my Puzzlesnacks store — these puzzles are definitely not at the usual easy Puzzlesnacks level of difficulty. Instead you can purchase it only via this secret link. $5.99 for the ten-puzzle set, including Hints and Answers.

Each year in mid-November, the Mohonk Mountain House, a stunningly beautiful resort in New Paltz, NY, presents “The Wonderful World of Words,” a weekend of puzzles and interesting lectures about words and linguistics. The event was run for years by Will Shortz, but recently he handed the mantle over to Greg Pliska — and Greg, who each weekend would create a puzzle hunt for the event, has handed that privilege over to me.

And so on top of talks from The Wall Street Journal‘s language maven Ben Zimmer and linguistic journalist Arika Okrent, attendees will get to solve “mo-HONK!”, a new puzzle hunt by yours truly. I gave a talk of my own at the event years ago, and I’m very excited that I now get to return.

I’m back in the New York Times this weekend with a new Jelly Roll variety puzzle, a form I invented and really enjoy constructing. I hope you like it!

I have not had a difficult pandemic, certainly not in comparison to many others. It was easy enough to work at home; it was similarly easy to hunker down with my family and wait out the storm. The harshest blow (which, I say again, was not THAT harsh by comparison) was when the 2020 convention of the National Puzzlers’ League was, inevitably, cancelled. My fellow wordplay obsessives and puzzle fanatics; which is to say, my closest friends — I wouldn’t see them for nearly two years. Oh, we tried some online conventions, and these were fun, but of course they weren’t nearly the same as gathering in a hotel and playing homemade game shows deep into the night.

As 2021 struggled to escape the black clouds of the previous year, we wondered — would the con need to be cancelled for a second year? Would we really be allowed to gather in large numbers in a hotel ballroom, or would that be deemed too risky? And if we DID have our convention — long planned for Washington, D.C. — would it be a shadow of its former self? Would people prove unwilling to travel? Would the continued need for COVID restrictions make the convention untenable?

Now the convention is over, and I am relieved to say that it felt just like every other NPL convention, except that we were missing several dozen familiar faces: We had not our usual 250 attendees but just over 100. Many people I would have liked to see and catch up with stayed away. Hopefully they will return with a vengeance next year, when we meet again in Nashville, Tennessee.

Those puzzle-minded people who took the chance and made the pilgrimage to D.C. were well rewarded. The convention always features an official program of original games, all designed for large groups, and this year the program was particularly strong. “Spelling Wasp,” by my friend Jen McTeague, was the highlight of the first night. As the name implies, this was a lot like a spelling bee… but far more likely to sting. The good news: You can choose any word to spell that you like, provided it fits that round’s assigned category. The bad news: Once you have enough letters to spell ANY word, that’s it, you’re done. So, given the category of Chemical Elements, you might choose to spell the word PROMETHIUM and thus earn 10 points (one for each letter). But, whoops, you forgot that PRO is a word. Sorry — that’s where you’ll have to stop. Please add a mere three points to your score.

Another game, ”Three-Way Switch,” by Dan Kramarsky and Todd McClary, hit the sweet spot of the NPL’s love of both crosswords and anagrams. The hosts fed the players three words at a time; these were words from three different crossword-style clues. Puzzlers who were lucky and smart enough might figure out the three answers from this limited information (helped by the knowledge that all of the answers are six letters long and anagrams of each other, as in DEPOTS, DESPOT, and POSTED). If you couldn’t figure out the answers, though, no worries: More words from the various clues were on their way — though the more clues you required, the fewer points you earned.

As always, after the evening’s official games, many puzzlers broke into smaller groups to play a wide variety of eccentric and creative homemade creations. Original “Jeopardy!” games have long been a mainstay of our after-hours activities, but even the most traditional of these have deeply puzzly categories and answers. And many other games will be miles away from anything that might be called traditional. This year I played “Makeshift Jeopardy,” which quickly overflowed into a half-dozen other classic game shows; and also “Jeo-Boardy,” which put a game show and a board game into one of those teleporters from The Fly, with hilariously nutty results.

Usually, the highlight of each year’s convention is a “puzzle extravaganza,” in which teams race to solve a dozen or so crafty, original word puzzles. Earlier this year, we didn’t know if we would be allowed to solve in small groups — would social distancing guidelines get in the way? And so, the decision was made: There would be no extravaganza at the 2021 con. (In hindsight, we could have easily accommodated the extravaganza, but it’s hard to blame anyone for being cautious.)

Losing the extravaganza should have been a major blow to the convention’s morale, but instead we got lucky: We happened to have our convention just as a new museum, Planet Word, opened to the public. Yes, an entire museum devoted to words and language, a few minutes walk from our hotel. Two prominent NPLers, New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz and Wall Street Journal language columnist Ben Zimmer, are on the museum’s board, and so arrangements were made: NPL members were given exclusive access to the museum’s exhibits for several hours. 

What a delight! Where was this museum when I was a ten-year-old budding word-and-puzzle nerd? There are exhibits devoted to picking apart advertisements; to analyzing song lyrics (with bonus karaoke); to the glory of books and libraries. A large room is devoted to jokes and puns, and upstairs from that is a gigantic globe, around which are interactive stations where you can explore various topics related to linguistics and different languages. The showpiece of the place, far and away, is a huge sculpture of a thousand or more words, which transforms into a dazzling multimedia deep dive into how the English language has evolved over the centuries.

On its way is a new exhibit called “Lexicon Lane,” headed up by Mike Selinker and his team of puzzlemakers. We were given an early preview, and I am here to tell you that this is going to be dazzling. Museumgoers will be able to sign out one of 26 puzzle boxes. Objects needed to help complete each box will be found all around the exhibit — and so you will need to explore as well as think. If all 26 boxes had been available, I think many of us would have conspired to hide out in the museum overnight, a la From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, so that we could complete them all.

While this year’s NPL convention was unusual in several ways, there was, as always, the stunned amazement on Sunday morning that it had gone by so fast. Is there not time for one more game? One more puzzle? Well, rats. I arrived in D.C. on Wednesday; five minutes later, or so it seems, I am writing this on the train ride home.

Back in February, I wondered as I made my hotel and train reservations if I would really get the chance to use them — and if I did, what kind of convention would I experience? I figured that even if the 2021 convention was a mere wisp of what I was used to, I would still be glad to be there. It turned out, however, to be a superb convention from start to finish… except, of course, for all the missing friends I wish had been there. But the great thing about the NPL convention is that after one ends, the next one is only a year away. Here’s to an even better 2022.

Greetings from Washington, D.C., where I am one of the not-as-many-attendees-as-usual-thanks-to-the-pandemic at the 2022 convention of the National Puzzlers’ League. It is great to see so many of my friends in person for the first time in a couple of years, and sad that so many others couldn’t make it. Normally I’d wait until after the convention to make my puzzle handout more widely available, but this is a weird year and I don’t want to exclude the people who couldn’t get here. This puzzle might not be a late-night homemade Jeopardy! game with entirely rewritten rules (there’s a lot of that sort of thing around here), but if you wanted to get to D.C. and couldn’t, I hope my puzzle brings you a little entertainment — and I hope to see you next year in Nashville.

And if you have no plans to join the National Puzzlers’ League but simply enjoy variety puzzles — that’s fine, too, please enjoy this one.

You can get my Patchwork puzzle here.

Over the past year or so, I’ve worked on creating new variety puzzle types for my main puzzle outlet, Puzzlesnacks. Two of these new types, Cascades and Jelly Roll, have gone on to have debuts in the New York Times. Now a third has joined them: A new variety form called Patchwork. New York Times subscribers can find it here, and if you’d like to start off with an easier version before diving into the main course, it just so happens that Patchwork is the free Puzzlesnacks puzzle for May — it’s available here for a few more days.

I contributed a Valentine’s Day puzzle to Scott Kominer’s puzzles-and-games column on Bloomberg News. You can see it here.

1) ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈ created an extraordinary online world to explore over the course of their Hunt, with Easter eggs and online games and a jillion puzzles to unlock and solve. Any feelings of doubt Hunters may have had about not being able to gather on campus for a “real” hunt were blown away the first time they entered this world and saw a sprawling cartoon version of MIT laid out for everyone’s enjoyment. If the Mystery Hunt continues for another 100 years, people will still be talking about this one.

2) My team, Palindrome, won — we found the coin in a virtual vending machine down the hall from where our real-life HQ has been in past years.

3) And because we won, and therefore have a Hunt of our own to prepare for 2022, I am already far too busy to provide more of a wrap-up than this.