Stephen Sondheim 'The Lyric Poet of Broadway ' ... and Crossword
Composer? Apex explains and presents a thematic puzzle
composed in honour.
In August 1967 1 sent Ximenes a Playfair crossword and after
solving it he sent the paper on which he had worked out the key-word as
he thought the scribblings might amuse and interest me, which of
course. they did. and even more so when I found that they were on the
back of one of he entries he had received for the previous month's
competition No. 962 bearing a clue to PALING, which he had highly
commended, from Mr. Stephen Sondheim of New York - such was my
introduction to the Ximenean who is now being rightly hailed as 'The
Lyric Poet of Broadway'. Some nine months later X's 1.000th
puzzle appeared and a Dinner was held at the Cafe Royal in London to
celebrate it and, although I didn't have the luck to bump into him,
Mr. Sondheim was there. The 1,000th puzzle was a 'Letters
Latent' - whether it was the very first of this type, I don't know, but
it was the first I had ever seen. The 36 letters which had to
be omitted when the answers were entered in the diagram
gave, in the correct order a Shakespearean quotation suitable for the
occasion - A THOUSAND RAW TRICKS WHICH I WILL PRACTISE.
The excellence of the puzzle took my breath away and I simply had to
try and make up a similar one myself. After searching for and finding a
suitable 36 letter quotation, I managed to complete a puzzle and as
Ximenes enjoyed solving it, and as I thought he might welcome the
opportunity to enter a clue writing contest himself, I decided to send
the puzzle to a few more Ximeneans and set the name of the author of
the quotation as the word to be clued. I selected the
strongest of teams - D S captain (Sussex), C.O Butcher (Essex). Sir S.
Kaye (Yorkshire). Mrs E. McFee (Middlesex), Dr. T.J.R. Maguire (Eire),
Mrs B. Lewis (Surrey), D.P,M. Michael (Glamorgan), C J. Morse
(Middlesex), A. Robins (Lancashire). Mrs E M Simmonds Berkshire), T.L.
Strange (Tasmania) and S. Sondheim (USA) who. although very busy
working on 'Company', at the time, enjoyed taking part.
Unfortunately, although everyone enjoyed solving the puzzle. only about
three of them knew the author of the quotation, so I had to send out an
additional clue which led to my receiving twelve very good
clues. After receiving all the clues (Without any names attached) the
team then voted for the clues they liked best and C.J.M.'s
“Obscure quoter, our great original seen in
retrospect”, just beat X's “Puzzle inventor - master in
twisted one'” Some months later, I was watching a programme
on ITV and suddenly decided to switch over to the BBC 2 channel and
just caught the ending of a programme in which some
fellow was being interviewed. Although I didn't know who he
was, I had a strange feeling that I did, and wasn't at all surprised to
find, when the details appeared on the screen, that it was Stephen
Sondheim who was in London for the opening of 'Company' at Her
Majesty's Theatre. I saw the show and enjoyed it immensely and was very
surprised to read in the programme that “Until
recently Stephen Sondheim was the author of maddening and diabolical
crossword puzzles which appeared in a New York Magazine”'. This
was great news to me because I was under the impression that all
crosswords in the States were of the definition only type, so I dropped
him a line to tell him what I thought of the show and asked about his
crosswords and if he would send me one. and he duly obliged The one he
sent me was 'Murder Mystery', which was the narrative type. Although
I'm not a great lover of this particular type of crossword,
I enjoyed solving it — that is, I completed the diagram, but then
one had to decide who had committed the murder, and I was completely
baffled — first I thought it was A — then B
— then C, of my own solvers to see. how they fared with it. but
unfortunately, yet fortunate for myself, for it led me to the murderer.
I had pencilled in the solution rather too heavily for erasing
and had to redraw the diagram before I could get copies made. The
result was 50 — 50 — two solved the puzzle quite easily.
but two were completely baffled.
A couple of years ago I was walking through the record department
of a Croydon store and the design of one of the record sleeves caught
my eye — not surprisingly, for it appeared to be a mixture of
Scrabble letters — and, on picking it up, I found the mixed up
letters spelt Stephen Sondheim and the titles of the shows he had been
associated with, inside were two live recordings of 'A Musical Tribute
to Sondheim' performed at the Shubert Theatre, New York on March 11th
1973 in aid of Charity. All the songs were sung by the Stars who had
appeared in the shows, and on buying and playing the records, I was
delighted to find one of the songs — 'Anyone can Whistle —
sung by Sondheim himself. All these songs have since been
brilliantly performed in 'Side by Side by Sondheim' at the Mermaid
Theatre, London, which was a treat for all those who are interested in
the magic of words.
Ximenes was a master of words who stuck to his principles and aimed at
perfection. The same can be said of Stephen Sondheim. I admire and
appreciate his work and. at a distance. follow his career
with increasing interest. I wasn't at all surprised to hear him say, in
a recent interview on BBC TV — 'I want to be able to stand at the
back of the house and be proud of what I see. not just in
terms of my own work, and say ' 'Yes! that musical was
worth spending a year and a half of your life on! ‘
It is said that one good thing leads to another. and in my case, this
is perfectly true — first Ximenes, then Sondheim -
I'm very glad to have had the good fortune to stumble on both of them.
This article was published in Games & Puzzles in 1974.