From the 2013 City Center Treasure Hunt: twelve clues guided players across four floors. Each clue revealed a theater ticket, each ticket a seat, and each seat a hidden letter. Put together, the twelve letters spelled out the treasure’s secret location.
Excerpt from the book Matching Minds with Sondheim:
The winners brought into the room a gold box. Inside lay the ultimate prize, sought after by scores of frantic guests. Until that moment, no one knew what it might be. It was held aloft for all to see.
Alex laughed. Out loud. It was a guffaw, in fact. Given all the money spent by their generous host on this lavish event, THIS was the prize?
It was a t-shirt with a picture of Perry’s face and across the bottom it read: I won the treasure. The woman holding it said, “Are you kidding me?”
Erin laughed to Alex, “I went to Perry’s party and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”
It was a perfect moment to end the hunt and encapsulate the joy of the whole thing.
When the hunt concluded, the chatter continued with a new collaborative tone. “What was the answer to the rebus?” was followed by a relieved, “Oh, I get it now!” Pools of confusion evaporated. Clarity spread across the room like ice shavings melted into a glass of water.
The announcement: Dinner was served.
On the staircase down, Alex and Erin were still trying to make sense of it all. How could they even begin to tell people about what they just experienced? It felt more like one of those crazy ideas inserted into a game of Two Truths and a Lie. Who would ever believe it?
“This is going to be very hard to explain,” Alex said to Erin.
She agreed. “It’s almost ridiculous,” Erin said, “to be like, ‘Yeah, I went on a treasure hunt created by Stephen Sondheim.’”
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