This episode looks at how Matching Minds with Sondheim is used as a college textbook. Eric Zimmerman describes integrating the book’s design-principle lists into a puzzle unit at New York University where students build puzzles under constraints, while former student A. Raph Corwin explains how Sondheim’s principles shaped her narrative puzzle work and led to founding Pigeon’s Path Games, creating location-specific outdoor puzzle game books such as A Haunting in Greenwich Village.

00:00 Scam Warning Intro

09:56 Episode Setup and Guests

12:19 Eric Class Breakdown

14:55 Puzzle Unit in Practice

17:03 Sondheim Meets Game Design

18:29 Teaching with Principles

22:15 Rules Literacy and Humor

24:14 Design Principle Spotlight

25:25 Workshops to Business

28:47 Pigeons Path Games Launch

30:32 Praise and Viability Lessons

33:35 Wrap Up and Credits

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Thanks to everyone who contributed behind the scenes to this episode: the Musical Stingers composed by Mateo Chavez Lewis, our line producer Dennis Caouki, and the theme song to our podcast with lyrics and music by Colm Molloy and sung by the one only Anne Morrison, currently on the road starring in Kimberly Akimbo.

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